How the Portals Will Win the Social Networking Wars

Every time I make a prediction, there's a better than 90% chance I am going to be wrong. But this one, you can take to the bank. The portals - AOL, Yahoo, Google, Windows Live, all of them - will be big winners in the social networking wars.

"What," you say? "How can that be? I already spend all my time on Myfaceborkutspace. My life is there. My friends are there. I lose an hour each time I even log into Myfaceborkutspace. Portals are so Web 1.0. I am all about Web 3.14159265."

I can't rebut this argument. Social networking is certainly rising and there seems to be no end in sight to the phenomenon. However, what I do know is that people will jump around from one Myfaceborkutspace to another and not all of them will win. This is particularly going to be true as social networking evolves from a destination into a feature of every web site.

So what does this have to do with the portals? Actually, a lot. They will be big winners, no matter which social networks dominate over the long haul.

The portals own the glue that keeps many of us connected to our structured social networks (e.g. Myfaceborkutspace) and the looser ones - e.g. a personal network of contacts. And that glue is a trusted communication system that works with every person and social net.

No matter which social network(s) you participate in, even if you float, you're going to turn to your trusted communication system to manage it all. This will include any or all of the following: a) web-based e-mail, b) instant messaging (which is nowadays integrated), c) RSS and d) telephony tools like Grand Central. And who dominates those? Yup. The portals - all of them. They have a pretty good lock in, especially as they give you all the storage you need.

This is not going to change. The big blurring of work and home technologies is allowing people to achieve greater flexibility in thieir lives. Webmail and IM are big drivers here. We're hooked but good because we use these four tools to also manage our interactions on social nets. I expect the portals will eventually build in new features that make this even all the more efficient.

Further, a lot of interactions you have within a portal site are monetized. So more social networking translates into more bacn, emails and IMs from contacts you want to follow, RSS feeds, voicemails, etc. This cascades into more ad clicks, searches and banner/rich media ad views. The result? Free money for the portals. Thank you Uncle Myfaceborkutspace! Even better, they didn't have to build a competitor. They just sit back and simply cash in.

Comments

[Ike]

The portals will dominate, but I still think there is a back-door available for the company that can be the Rosetta Stone --- bringing forth a universal API that does for Social Networking data what OpenID does for login.

[Colin Henderson]

While there is no denying the logic of this, I remain unsure, because I think we don't know, what we don't know. The kool kids have already left email, and are communicating in a myriad of other ways, including Myfaceborkutspace. So one question, is whether the kk's are indicative of future mass adoption. So far they have been, but of course things change.

The broader question, might be to ask "how I will know people, and how I will be known" in the future. At the moment Myfaceborkutspace are somewhat leading that, in a relatively lame kind of way. Surely someone will get better at knowing me, and knowing who I know. There is no evidence that suggests the portals, even Google, have any idea about that. Granted Myfaceborkutspace are using a walled garden approach, and, no I don't buy that either.

So maybe the main question, is as simple as, 'who will help me define who I am, and allow me to choose my contacts [including ads]'. I don't see that as either Myfaceborkutspace, or the Portals. Somehow, someone will allow me to own my own identity, and choose my interactions.

[Prokofy]

I'm going to stay inside Second Life. Occasionally, I may go up to Facebook or Twitter for a few. I hope Yahoo and Google don't add any more junk to their already cluttery pages.

[Derek Abdinor]

Good points, the portals are selling shovels to prospectors. I think this could still be a safe, reactionist strategy by these players, and one may see them trying to steal a march in the indispensibility stakes.

Currently, that place may be the start page (online) merged with an offline reader/doc management system. Tools like Google Gears could really establish an unbreakable link between desktop and web, making the portal represented in both spaces. Ha! just saw in your twitter updates you're doing something similiar using GMail. http://www.corporatewebsite.com/articles/intranet/an_intranet_for_one

[ethan]

I just can't see the socnets and the portals at war, they are different and for those of us who aren't portal junkies... i.e. I use gmail (via pop to my mail app) I use multiple instant messengers via adium, twitter via twitterific. The only reason I use a portal is to searh, the only reason I use a socnet is to hang out with friends. The ideas are so different they both with thrive.

As for facebook it's not going anywhere soon, there are too many old people on there to make the switch, the late adopters are even signing up now.

All that to say that my computer is my communications portal with different apps for things and a web portal is only one portion of that.

[Shama Hyder]

Steve-you mention the blurring of work and home technologies. What does this mean for our future?

[Angela]

I appreciate your article. You have given us something to think about.

[Narendra]

Actually, the classic portals will lose and are losing everything *except* the search component. With open data streams, the email portion becomes portable but even that isn't so critical because email is becoming completely marginalized by all of the communication in socialnets (e.g. twitter, walls, internal messaging, photos, etc.).

Social networking is definitely the new standard feature of any property but the big shift is that people are finding that being able to see what their friends are doing is more engaging than some generic content. Yahoo had a shot to win in the war for personalization but they couldn't pull it off.

[chrisco]

The big boys will not win... they can't win... because they are the big boys. The cool kids and trendsetters LEAVE the big boys when they become the big boys. It's a never-ending cycle. Go back and read Malcomb Gladwell's books if you know that fact to the core of your soul. Scary. Cheers, chrisco

[Dragan Varagic]

There is another kind of article about the future of portals, from NY Times blog: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/why-portals-are-so-over-at-aol/ and there is a very interesting point of the "long tail" separation of portal services, including the Google point of view of the portals.

In that context, Social Network as the feature, can be also seen as Facebook Social Network, the part of the Google Network of Services.

[Tim]

I think the clutter of Social Networks nowadays will go early then we all think - most people are not eager to live in para-social worlds -they want and need reality - From our a Brand Science Institute research project called http://www.meinenachbarschaft.eu we saw that people in social networks are always going back into their suburbian areas and only use networks to communicate that and that' it!

[Richard Stacy]

I don't think it is a case of portals winning the war - because there isn't really a war. Social networks (or social clusters as I prefer to call them) - not portals - will become the main building blocks of the social media landscape but there will need to be "The One Place" which sits on top and allows the individual to manage both the stuff they send out and the stuff they want to receive from one place. Will that be a portal? If so portal is the wrong word. Will it be provided by the organisations currently known as portals? Possibly - but I don't see any of these really getting to grips with the main issue that a "social media citizen" is equally both a producer and consumer of media / content. Their offerings tend to treat you as one or the other.

I think the landscape of the future will be comprised of four things: online social clusters, floating content, "The One Place" and opinion aggregators. More here - http://preview.tinyurl.com/2yfdmh

[Al Doyle]

portal? wow! what a trip down memory lane! I remember my first AOL account back in the 90s. But I dumped her. Sometime I visit google to search, but those others? what's the point?

[Lars Georg Teigen]

I think both Steve and Richard is on to something. Sociability is a feature and there will be many social clusters. But what will be "The One Place"?. Will it be the just another half-open silo? Or will it be an independent aggregator. In Second Brain, we're betting on the latter.

[francine hardaway]

Your post seems pretty prescient today, as Google buys Jaiku. I think the term portal, however, is just what your other readers say it is--so Web 1.0. I never use my Google home page, but I am constantly in gmail, so if everything hung off that, which is does now, it would have me. So easy to get from gmail to calendar, to reader, to gtalk, to jaiku...

[Joel Cere]

Hello Steve,

What do you think of Google's acquisition of Jaiku v. Twitter?

Joel

[Christian Scholz]

Interesting to read this now again after Google released OpenSocial ;-)

Now it seems that that they are even actively trying to level the field a bit by providing a standard. A first good step.

Another thing winning will also be open standards and maybe also open source because in the end you want to control your software (if you are a geek at least).

[ekivemark]

Steve, I believe that the portals will win out because most of us are inherently lazy and want to pull together the digital threads of our lives in to one place where we can easily view the total picture. If the portals try to replicate social networking instead of embracing other networks then I have to side with Stowe Boyd and bet on the Portals failing.