The core conceit here is the idea that what we've seen so far (facebook, g+) represents the apotheosis of social network services. It only takes a few minutes of thinking about that to realize how silly the idea is. Social software is here to stay and it's going to have a big impact on society. But how it works will surely change a great deal over time, to a degree where what exists in 2020 may be completely unrecognizable to us today.
Is social software fundamentally unprofitable? I think the answer has to be no. Even the clumsy monetization of facebook today shows a healthy profit, even if it is orders of magnitude below the fevered expectations of the market. More so, as running high user count services becomes cheaper due to advances in technology social software will merely become easier and easier to profit from.
Is social software fundamentally unprofitable? I think the answer has to be no. Even the clumsy monetization of facebook today shows a healthy profit, even if it is orders of magnitude below the fevered expectations of the market. More so, as running high user count services becomes cheaper due to advances in technology social software will merely become easier and easier to profit from.