Blog

Over the past few years sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have grown in usage and been adoption by countless users. Early on everyone wanted to be part of this growing phenomenon, knowing that social media would be something that would survive long term and maybe even rival other internet functions. The web is constantly evolving but social media has proven to be a trend that isn’t fading any time soon.

The chances are slim for any new service competing for a piece of the social media pie are in for a reality check. With services like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn already having established a part in our daily lives it will be very difficult for any new comer. The social media land grab is over and Facebook, Reddit and Twitter have won. Today we are reviewing the winners and the survivors of the social media gold rush.

Social Networking

It goes without saying, Facebook has no equal. Their explosive growth and continued adoption has grown Facebook to nearly a billion users. Still, they pick up more new users than any other social network.

In 2012, the company will likely go public. They will need to make a big move outside of their normal realm of operation. It has been speculated that Facebook will buy Bing from Microsoft or at least form a stronger partnership with them to have search powered by Bing on Facebook.

Contrary to Facebook’s overwhelming size, they’re not “too big to fail”. Many who have experience with their platform are baffled as to how the site hasn’t hat a catastrophic crash already. They’ve finally solved their revenue problems to some extent and are showing a nice profit, but will it be enough to sustain shareholders when they do go public?

As long as millions are posting updates, pictures, and videos daily, it’s hard to imagine anything short of a major outage, lawsuit, or hack that could take the company off its perch.

Here are the other Social Network competitors:

Microblogging

The term “microblogging” is outdated already, but Twitter still stays at the top. There are contenders, but even they have to rely on Twitter to be relevant.

Twitter ended up winning the battle against the earlier contenders such as Pownce and Jaiku because of celebrity adoption. Digg and Pownce founder Kevin Rose even went so far as to say that he liked Twitter better than his own creation. They sold Pownce a couple of months later and it has laid dormant ever since.

The key to Twitter’s success has been adoption, but they are still vulnerable. Their revenue model is weak at best and despite a strong focus over the last year to find the right ways to be profitable, they have barely scratched the surface.

They may just end up being a fad, and there’s only one pseudo-competitor that could emerge in 2012 to beat them.

Social News

This time last year, Digg was still in the news as the largest provider of user-voted content. Their disastrous move to V4 in August sent many users to their main competitor and the land of Reddit hasn’t been the same ever since.

The “front page of the internet” has seen an explosion in traffic that most analytics and tracking services cannot even fathom. Last month, an image of a chat between a Reddit user and an Amazon CSR received over 800,000 views, most of which came in the first 48 hours.

This is not a one-off example – every day there are posts that receive hundreds of thousands of views on Reddit. The “Digg Effect” of old has been replaced and eclipsed by the “Reddit Effect”, causing many in the community to rely on sites like Imgur for their ability to stay up despite traffic spikes.

The site seems to do so many things right for its community. You don’t hear the same complaints as you do on the other power social sites like Facebook and Twitter. Much of this can be attributed to their announcement of independence from Conde Nast in September. While they’re trying to build a business, they’re trying to do it without affecting the community.

There are two sites that still compete in this field, even though it’s the one social media arena that is narrowing:

The Rest

What about Foursquare? Groupon? Chime.in and the many other sites out there that still have significant traffic and usage?

The niches that these and other sites reside in are still wide open. The three major social media disciplines (networking, news, and microblogging) are set. There need be no new entrants into those arenas. Some may still attempt to commandeer a degree of attention but won’t be able to topple the established giants.

In the niche social media world, there is still hope for innovation and creativity. Those wanting to stake their claim need to look here. Rather than building a Facebook killer or looking for the next big thing, they need to find a niche that needs servicing and master it. The big landgrab is over, but there are still plenty of smaller patches of land that need to be claimed.