Facebook Bankruptcy

And here's Jason echoing what I was saying earlier today on why Twitter won't win.

And also, I think, ties into this and this.

Facebook Bankruptcy:

Today I'm declaring Facebook Bankruptcy in addition to comment bankruptcy.

I can't keep up with the friend requests, the requests to confirm how we know each other, the requests to tell you I like you, the requests to tell you I want your to tell me what movies you want to tell me about, etc.

I've got too many friends torturing me about movies I'll never see at this point--I don't need you to burden me with the movies you want me to see. I want to watch my Kurosawa DVDs again! I want to watch all the Frankenheimer movies I missed... even the bad ones!

Yes, I love Zombies, but no I don't want to be turned into one.

Social networks only succeed when the value they return a value that is worth the investment -- in this case, the primary investment is time. What the value returned is depends, everyone will define that differently, but there has to be a commonality here that this investment is worthwhile. This lack of return is likely one reason why so many blogs get abandoned; after the initial rush of enthusiasm wears off, people realize that it's, well, work, and takes time and energy (and for many folks, for little return). So they drop out.

You're seeing the same thing on social networks -- and I find it interesting that the word "bankruptcy" is coming to the fore to talk about this problem; it's people realizing that TIME has a value, and I expect for most of us, when we stop and think about it, time is one of our more valued and scarce resources.

A while back I talked about how social networks need to figure out how to move beyond the "friend/contact (or not) status to how we really deal wtih groups of people -- as small sub-groups that overlap, but are far from homogenous.

Here's the other real challenge for social networks: users need tools and capability to allow themselves to manage their time on the site. Jason's not the first to declare a limit to how much time they'll give sites like Faceboook; he's just the highest profile. But this is a canary in the social networking coal mine. It's the bane of the high profile person (online or not) -- managing the requests for their time by others. Marc Andreesen and Ed Kohler have talked about this in terms of blog comments and email, so it's not just Facebook.

It comes down to one core issue: time management. We all struggle with it (and that's why systems like Getting Things Done are so popular, because we need the help building the tools and processes to manage this); it's something I used to talk to my people about at Apple and Strongmail -- that you need to manage your meeting calendar, not let it manage you. Now we're seeing that same issue migrate into these online systems -- because the bottom line is, there are only so many hours in a day, so many days in a week, and if you don't budget them, you'll come out the other end wondering why you were so busy and didn't accomplish a damn thing.

Does Twitter allow you to manage your time more efficiently than without it? Does Facebook? The answer to that question will be huge in their success or failure. I think right now the answer is "initially, yes, to a degree", but as the social network grows and matures, the advantages diminish and the time requirements grow and the balance fails. These sites need to figure this out, or you'll see huge churn rates and drops as people hit that "wait, this is work" time after the initial 'wow, this is fun" phase fades. I'll bet it's already happening, in fact, it's just not really being noticed.

Update:

more on this now at Facebook Bankrupcty, Part 2.

Comments

[Dennis]

did you see GMA's thing on email this morning?

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/TakeControlOfYourLife/story?id=3418958&page=1