I don’t know if I am the only one who is absolutely exhausted and frankly disgusted by the recent spate of squabbling between the big players of the social web. We’ve Facebook bullying its customers in moving to the @facebook e-mail account, the Twitter/LinkedIn cross-posting palava, Google+ inability to spit out a full set of APIs to its social network, and Apple suing anyone with a heartbeat. And this is just in the last week.
I can totally understand the drive to be competitive and to win market share, but I believe there is a fundamental flaw in the logic, or delusion, under which all these guys seem to be functioning. Namely…
- Who said there was ever going to be just ONE social network?
- That for one to succeed the other has to fail?
- Why does world domination have to be the end-goal?
And now I recognize I am sounding naive :-)
I just don’t believe that any single organization is ever going to control the entire worlds social conversations, nor should they. In fact the idea is totally obsurd. And what’s with the FTC during all this? Asleep at the wheel?
Now I know I am really starting to sound like a broken record, so I promise this will be the last blog post on this topic for a while. But this “social network turf war” is damaging to the most important constituent in this entire equation… The Consumer. We are being forced down an increasingly narrow pipe, being manipulated by these social web vendors. Our choice is being taken away from us. We don’t need social network silos, we need interoperability! This is why the Internet is the amazing resource it is.
So please will you guys all just grow the heck up and stop fighting!
Thanks to @JoshConstine, @samfbiddle, @MattMcGee, @cmswire, and @AndroidAuth for the inspiring material that I referenced above.
Marie's Ramblings & Ruminations 