Will Social Networks Take Over the Internet?
I read some interesting websites and blogs this morning about how social networks are supposed to replace Google and other search engines. I thought about this for a second. I mean, I’ve had a Myspace profile for over two years now and still don’t use it for a lot besides keeping a personal blog. I occasionally look up bands or entertainers and see what they are doing. I suppose I could use Myspace to get to know random people. That seems to be what it was designed for.
Mostly what I use the net for is to look up information on some subject. Yesterday I read a bit about black holes and used some of this information to write a blog post. If I want to find out where to buy something, or what’s new, or where some place is located, the search engines are perfect. I’m not going to wait around for a friend to come online to ask them where I can get shoelaces. The very concept of that is ridiculous.
Saying that social networks will replace search engines is like saying the movies will replace libraries. Yes, you can use both places for entertainment, but seriously, you are going to wait an eternity for a movie to explain quantum physics to you. Libraries and movies serve different purposes. Social networks are for socializing with people. Search engines are for finding out about stuff.
With sites like Facebook and Orkut and Linkedin and hundreds of others all over the web, there is definitely some growth in social media. A lot of people are finding out how easy it is to use the net to communicate with people all over the world. If you want to meet people you do not have to pay a friend finder.com site to post your personal advertisement. All you need is a free account with a social network and a bit of time and a photo.
Social networks appear to have grown out of the old personal home pages that people post on AOL and other ISP websites. Instead of being a disconnected site, you now have messaging and other interaction capabilities like adding friends and broadcasting announcements to all your friends. It is easy to leave comments and other messages on a friend’s page and you do not have to rely on only using email to get feedback on your profile. There is also a blog function that can be used to write down your thoughts. Social networks are a bit more functional than a network of independent personal home pages. Their general purpose is the same though, to meet and stay in contact with people.
With the size of the Internet and the billions of pages that are on servers all over the world, I don’t think there is any danger of social networks completely taking over the Internet. It’s just another feature of the online world. People are already trying to figure out how to make money off the various social media, and social media marketing is a popular feature of many new marketing approaches. Myspace and Facebook are never going to replace Google and Yahoo. I think it is more likely that the search engines will take over the social networks, once the spiders start crawling the networks more effectively.
