Battle of Social Media

Google’s launch of + (Google Plus) is just a little over two weeks ago. They already have some 10 million users signed up. With all the buzz and excitement surrounding it, it looks set to push much farther ahead than Google’s other social projects managed to achieved. It is the first real competition to Facebook. Google still has a long way to go, but their latest project is certainly on the right path to make sure Internet users spend more time on their website than on that of their competitors’.

For some years, we have been inundated with so many new social media platforms. Although Friendster and Myspace didn’t really catch up in a big way here (or at least not in my social circle), there were enough of others: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc. All these cloud-based services were drowning out personal blogs. Blogs as this one. Yes, I’m definitely posting in here much less nowadays than say one or two years ago. Not surprisingly, Facebook and, more recently, Google+, has been taking up blogging time.

For some people, they have simply taken their blog postings to Facebook, or other similar social web platforms. Some others have simply changed the way they share, long posts (i.e. anything over 100 words) have been reduced to just a few sentences, often even less.

I’m just wondering how the social web landscape will change in the next year or two. The myriad of social web platforms are probably going to consolidate. Just Facebook and Google+. Or maybe, well, predominantly Google+. Or perhaps we will continue to see fresh waves of niche services spring up, before they are once again consolidated by some big-name player.

Personal blogs are on their way out. Or they need to re-invent themselves. Perhaps, to re-integrate with the current trend of the social web.