Introducing: Path

The number of social media platform has increased significantly in the last 2 years and one of the most recent is Path. Path was launched in November 2010 (Not too long ago) by a former Facebook employer, Dave Morin.  Path is basically a social-networking platform which enables of photo sharing and messaging for mobile devices. It is interesting to see that while Facebook continues to face trouble in translating its success into the mobile platform, Path is simply ignoring websites and focusing their company entirely in the mobile realm. Why do they focus on mobile platform? After being asked on an interview, Morin said that there are 5 billion mobile subscribers and only 1 billion desktop in the world, so the mobile era is here.

Path also limits each user’s social network to 150 friends and therefore it is an intimate way to share the stuff that you like without broadcasting it to wide range audiences like on Facebook or Twitter. However, there is still an option for you to synchronize your Path account with your Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare account. In addition, when asked about the reason behind limiting the number of friend that each user might have, Morin said that this is based on research by Oxford University professor, RobinDunbar who reveals that the number of social relationships that our brain can handle is only 150.

Introducing: Path

As Facebook has become more and more popular, don’t you think that sometimes Facebook is overused by displaying advertising, events or photos that we actually don’t care about? This is where Path becomes a refreshing alternative for us. Based on Morin’s interview on CNBC, He said that as per June 2012, Path has more than 3 million users and Path is expected to experience a significant growth in the future.

Path Has Some Pretty Solid Ratings in Apple's App Store 

Through its commitment and innovation, do you think that it is possible for Path to gain more number of users than Facebook in terms of mobile platform? Leave your thoughts here.

Cheers,

Ivan

Facebook to Build Search Engine?

Social media and search engine have become interconnected. Look what Google has done. After creating its social media platform called Google +, Google has recently announced the significant change to its search engine, calling it Search, Plus Your World. The idea behind “Search, Plus Your World” is that Google is trying to personalize your search results by including Google + data when you are signed into your Google account.  Search plus Your World surfaces content that has been shared with you on Google+, as well as public information from the social networking site that is related to your search, and integrates this data into typical Web search results. 

Google's "Search, Plus Your World

Meanwhile Google is trying to socialize its Search, Plus Your World, rumor has said that Facebook is also trying to build its own search engine. According to Businessweek, Facebook has formed more than 20 engineers that led by a former Google programmer. According to Mashable, the aim of this Facebook initiative is that to take the better advantage from lots of contents Facebook users create on and off the site every day. With people sharing status updates and supporting brand pages on the network, as well as using Facebook’s “Like” button to mark articles and videos from external sites, there is certainly a lot to take advantage of.

At the moment, Facebook has not confirmed the news yet. One of Facebook’s spokesperson has been asked and here is the response: “We don’t comment on rumors and speculation around products.” So, we have to wait until Facebook releases the official statement but if the rumor is true, it will increase the competition between the two Silicon Valley giants.

What do you think? Would an improved social search engine within Facebook affects the significant of Google search? Leave your thoughts here.

Cheers,

Ivan

What Happened to Friendster?

Does anyone remember Friendster? Yes! It’s one of the first movers on social networking site for consumers.  Back then, Friendster WAS an online community that connects people through networks of friends and nowadays, Friendster has become a social gaming portal. Malaysian company, MOL agreed to acquire Friendster for roughly $100 million and on 31^st of May 2011, Friendsters had deleted its users' content. To be honest, I have no idea whether the takeover was necessary for Friendster. But I suppose that was the only way to save Friendster from bankruptcy. But then, isn’t it just sad to see one of the pioneers of social media site turned into social gaming portal? (No offense for gamer). And even, the young billionaire like Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Friendster was a model for his new website (Facebook)

Friendster's Page During the Old Days

So, basically what exactly happened with Friendster? Why did Friendster lose its supremacy?  Fierce competition was clearly one of the factors behind the collapse of Friendster. When Friendster was enjoying its first mover advantage, several competitors such as MySpace and Facebook came up and started to threaten Friendster’s market share and eventually due to lack of innovation in technology, Friendster had given up its “supremacy” to its competitors. Lack of innovation. Yes. I suppose this was also another reason of Friendster’s collapse. And this was also admitted by Jim Scheinman, the former Friendster executive who says that “For me, it basically came down to failed execution on the technology side and I remember reading thousands of customer service emails telling us that if we didn’t get our site working better soon, they’d be ‘forced to join’ a new social networking site that had just launched called MySpace”. 

In addition, according to Peter Pachal, Friendster also didn’t understand some basic principle of social media. Friendster put way too much emphasize on the media side not the social side. Friendster was lacking in terms of “news feed”. It seemed that the only thing to do on Friendster at that time was polishing our profile and getting the testimonial from friends as much as we could. In contrast, although in the early days Facebook was about profile too, but then Zuckerberg has realized that Facebook's news feed was the key to its long-term success. What they did was putting friends' updates, shares, and discussions to the front and centre of the page. Full article can be read here. Therefore, due to genius movement made by Zuckerburg, Friendster did not have a chance to stand up against Facebook. Even if Friendster had introduced its comparable experience to the news feed, it was far too late for them.

Friendster's Page in Current Days

Based on the Friendster’s case, do you think what happened to Friendster might also happen to Facebook? 

Cheers,
Ivan