Social Media Hits and MissesWith Facebook set to go public and MySpace on life support, Custom Communication charts a history of social media Next Big Things and asks: Where

are they now?

BLOGGING

The promise: Founded in April 1999, LiveJournal was the first service to “productize” the trend of keeping a weblog or online diary. Its first mover status was quickly eclipsed by Blogger and then Six Apart, which bought LiveJournal to add to its successful Movable Type and Typepad platforms.

Where are they now?: Six Apart sold LiveJournal to Russian publishers in 2007. But don’t write it off - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has one of its blogs.First to Market

The promise: Co-founded by Evan Williams in August 1999, Blogger was bought by Google in 2003 just as blogging caught the attention of the mainstream.

Where are they now? Still part of Google’s product portfolio but never fulfilled its potential. Blogger was a victim both of Google’s lack of social media nous and of the cultural shift away from long-form blogging to social networking and microblogging.

Media Darling

The promise: From humble beginnings in 2003 Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg and his open source diaspora have quietly created a powerful and adaptable publishing platform to rival anything Google or Microsoft could develop.

Where are they now? Arguably the most popular content management system in the world, Wordpress continues to provide the bedrock for some of the world’s leading websites.The Innovator

The promise: Blogging takes too much time while Twitter leaves no space to express yourself. Could blog/microblog hybrids like Tumblr and Posterous be the happy medium creative social media sharers crave?

Where are they now? Flaky technology seems to be hindering Tumblr’s grab at greatness. Posterous’ mobile publishing play may yet prove a winner in a world where smart phones rule.

Future Shock

SOCIAL NETWORKS

The promise: Founded in 2002, Friendster quickly established itself as the first social network prompting much media frenzy even though some would argue the UK’s Friends Reunited was the true forerunner of social networking.

Where are they now? After turning down a $30 million acquisition offer from Google in 2003, Friendster found itself losing friends as it fell foul of the fickle nature of social network community retention.

First to Market

Where are they now? On a death watch. Was it News Corp.’s tin-eared approach to turning MySpace into a global entertainment hub, the chaotic design or simply the social smarts of a certain other network that consigned MySpace to the social media scrap heap?

The promise: Rupert Murdoch’s great social hope, MySpace was bought in 2005 by News Corp. for a then whopping $580 million to help realize the old media giant’s social media potential.

Media Darling

The promise: More than a few people claim to have recognised Facebook’s early potential (some even have pending lawsuits to enforce that claim) even if Goldman Sachs wasn’t one of them.

Where are they now?: Now that Goldman Sachs has decided FB is worth $50 billion, its imminent IPO looks set to be the most hyped tech event since the AOL-Time Warner merger. What could go wrong?

The Innovator

The promise: China’s top two social networks (of which Ren Ren has the most breakout potential) have a combined membership of more than 500 million users in a country where Facebook is blocked by the government.

Where are they now?: The lessons of Friendster, MySpace, Bebo, not to mention Yahoo, all demonstrate the dangers in forecasting online hegemony. Ren Ren, a direct clone of Facebook, has real growth potential but who’s to say a new upstart won’t upstage the lot?

Future Shock

GROUP BUYING

The promise: Launched in 1999, Mercata got the markets buzzing with its plan to revolutionize e-commerce by aggregating consumers and use that buying clout to attract sellers willing to sell bulk deals at a discount. Paul Allen and Bernard Arnault were part of a team of investors that poured $90 million into the venture.

Where are they now? Mercata collapsed following the Nasdaq plunge of 2000, cancelled its planned $100 million IPO in January, 2001 and closed down a few days later. Its assets and patents were bought by Seattle entrepreneur Martin Tobias who launched Tippr, a Mercata group-buying clone.

First to Market

The promise: Mobshop (originally, Accompany) launched about the same time as Mercata with a near-identical business model. The similarities didn’t end there. It too raised a mountain of cash with Marc Andreessen, General Electric and Visa International all on board. Another big believer: the U.S. government, which awarded Mobshop in 2000 a contract to run its e-procurement.

Where are they now? Mobshop ran out of money in 2001 and closed up shop not long after Mercata went bust. Mobshop founders held onto their patent for demand-aggregation e-commerce - keeping hopeful investors wondering about a comeback.

Media Darling

The promise: That comeback is today called Groupon, which shrewdly bought the Mobshop patent years later and opened its own group-buying business in November, 2008. Today it boasts 50 million users and operates in 35 countries, exorcising the group-buying demons of the late 90s.

Where are they now? Even before raising $950 million, Forbes crowned Groupon “the fastest growing company ever.” The mainstream press is so dazzled by this innovative wonder it rarely evokes the M-word. And they never ask Paul Allen what he thinks of the idea.The Innovator

The promise: There is one kink in the group-buying model, it is so easily replicated. Groupon shrugs off the hundreds of copycats out there, but it cannot ignore the one player that’s already getting great returns on the crowd-sourcing retail model: Walmart.

Where are they now? Launched on Facebook in October, Walmart’s CrowdSaver is going great guns, easily amassing thousands of buyers per week, per offer.Future Shock

PHOTO SHARING

The promise: Today the strongest social media currency is undoubtedly visual imagery but back in 2001 - the year Picasa launched - uploading images to the web was still a niche (and somewhat arduous process).

Where are they now? Picasa was part of the great photo service landgrab which saw it being acquired by Google, Photobucket, ahem, snapped up by Fox and Flickr by Yahoo. Picasa is still going strong helped by a popular Android mobile app.First to Market

The promise: In an era of daft web 2.0 company names Flickr kinda made sense. Certainly its smart “badge” integration with blog platforms at just the time blogging hit the big time helped. Flickr galleries were a revelation for many blog and mainstream online publishers.

Where are they now? Flickr was always more than just a photo sharing service. It promised a community network in its own right and still remains a favorite of photo folk. How long it can prosper in the decaying Yahoo empire remains to be seen.Media Darling

The promise: Facebookers love sharing photos even if they often fail to check their privacy settings before uploading. Members uploaded 750 million photos on New Years Eve 2011.

Where are they now? On a relentless march to social photo domination along with much of the rest of the social footprint we choose to share with Facebook and the major brands that salivate over its advertising potential.

The Innovator

The promise: Did we mention the marketing making/busting power of smart phones? Both Picplz and Instagram aim to capitalise on our desire to snap on the move and share.

Where are they now? Perhaps poised for greatness? Perhaps to shoot and burn. We’ve been writing about the coming mobile revolution for over a decade but 2011 might just be the year it fulfils the dream. When it does the demand for a killer photo sharing service will explode.

Future Shock

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

The promise: Delicious launched back in 2003 when folksonomy was a hip buzzword. The brainchild of former Wall Streeter, Joshua Schacter, Delicious became the bookmarking bible for social media early adopters, a status that didn’t diminish when Yahoo bought it in 2005.

Where are they now? Hanging by a knife edge as Yahoo goes through yet another crisis of personality. Late last year techland was abuzz with news that Yahoo was going to kill Delicious. Now it seems the portal just wants to sell the service....as soon as possible.First to Market

The promise: There was a time, halfway through 2006, when social bookmarking was being hyped as the new search and Digg was being afforded the status of YouTube and MySpace. Founder Kevin Rose found himself on the cover of Business Week with this caption: “How this kid made $60 million in 18 months.”

Where are they now? Digg still gets some 8.5 million visits a month but its attempts at media curating and community building never rivaled the pure play social networks. In 2008 Digg was reported to be losing money and narrowly missed out on being snapped up by Google. By late 2010 Rose had resigned as CEO following a decidedly rocky revamp of the site.

Media Darling

The promise: Twitter might not seem an obvious social bookmarking service but it can lay a strong a claim to that role as it does social network or microblogging platform. Indeed you could argue that Twitter’s superior sense of community and follower connectivity is what makes its social site referrals more valuable to its users even without the folksonomy tools.

Where are they now? Gulp, okay, we’re going to say it. Despite its power as a referral engine/network/microblogging platform Twitter still hasn’t worked out its raison d’etre. That might give it flexibility to evolve but if it only succeeds as a social bookmark tool then there will be a lot of VC red faces.The Innovator

The promise: Facebook’s potential lies both in the intimacy it affords friendship communities and also the mammoth scale of its network. That’s a boon for information distribution and referrals of services and links based on personal trust.

Where are they now? New research shows that Facebook is now the number 2 online information referral and retrieval source going neck and neck with Google. It’s secret weapon - that ubiquitous “like” button.

Future Shock

VIDEO

The promise: With broadband penetration finally reaching meaningful numbers, Tel Aviv-based Metacafe launched its video-sharing community in 2002 operating under the indisputable premise: TV programming execs are lame; its your buddies’ hard drive that contains all the must-view videos.

Where are they now? An attempt to lure big-name film and TV producers to produce original content for the Web bombed, but the community still ticks along. The fact it’s never been prudish about NSFW fare helps.First to Market

The promise: In 2004, tech pundits crowned “vlogging” as the next big thing and pointed to Rocketboom with its video news dispatches riffing on digital life delivered daily by darling of the geek boys, Amanda Congdon. Newsweek hailed her refreshing “youthful, Web-savvy insouciance”.

Where are they now? Amanda left in 2006 and the term “vlogging,” thankfully, didn’t survive much longer. Rocketboom still lives, with another comely blonde presenter reading the script to an audience no bigger than your typical TV news broadcast.  

Media Darling

The promise: The future of video on the web is not about watching a young babe read a round-up of cool stuff. It’s about letting all of us post video at will, creating the world’s largest search-able archive of films. YouTube may not have conceived this idea, but it teamed with the only company on the planet, Google, that could make it a reality.

Where are they now? In November, nearly 146 million Americans watched video on YouTube, a figure that continues to grown steadily month-on-month. YouTube’s recent embrace of advertising hasn’t hurt one bit either. Google was telling analysts last year the video-sharing site was close to posting its first profit.

The Innovator

The promise: The good old tube has taken its knocks, but it’s soaring again thanks to HDTV, PVRs and digital media players. Why else would Google and Apple be investing so much in a technology from the 1920s?

Where are they now? The latest Zenith Media forecast says the global TV advertising market will top $202 billion by 2012, accounting for 41% of the entire global ad market. And with Google TV and Apple TV set-top boxes soon to be proliferating, even the younger generations will find something cool to watch on the tube again.

Future Shock

GEOLOCATION

The promise: Long before 3G arrived in lower Manhattan, super-popular NYU student Dennis Crowley developed in 2000 a computer program enabling him to text multiple friends at once where he was hanging out around town. That innovation became Dodgeball, the first mobile social network. Sort of.

Where are the now? Despite the fact early Dodgeball users had to manually provide their location to get information on nearby cool stuff, the idea had its fans. One was Google, which bought Dodgeball in 2005 and shut it down four years later. It lives today as Google Latitude.

First to Market

The promise: While at Stanford University, Sam Altman dreamed of an application that would tell him what all his friends were up to once he stepped out of class. This was the idea that launched Loopt in 2005 in the pre-iPhone age. Three years later, Steve Jobs himself demoed Loopt on stage when he introduced to the world the cool possibilities of the 3G iPhone.

Where are the now? Loopt today boasts 4 million users and is available on every major US mobile network, and, crucially, the Web. Despite Jobs’ sterling endorsement, it’s survived by opening up, allowing users to post their updates to more populous social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

Media Darling

The promise: It’s only fitting that Dennis Crowley, founder of Dodgeball should usher geolocation into the social networking era. Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai launched Foursquare in 2009, a geo-based social network that awards “badges” to those who “check-in” to literally any imaginable place, office and living room included.

Where are they now? In under two years, Foursquare has leap-frogged older rivals in signing up 5 million users. Even extremely rich people in Switzerland are fans. The World Economic Forum will crown Foursquare one of its Technology Pioneers for 2011.The Innovator

The promise: Asia rules the mobile airwaves. Always has, always will. The mobile-mad Japanese are old pros at using the most advanced cel networks in the world to check-in, meet up, upload and crowdsource. Mixi was born in 2004, giving Japanese mobile users a place to build communities based on their particular interests.

Where are they now? At 10 million users, Mixi is Japan’s favorite mobile social network, generating millions of pageviews per day. It may not be able to crack the U.S. market, but it’s got a lock on the most advanced and utilized market of them all.Future Shock

Custom Communication is an editorial and social media consultancy that draws on many years experience in the world of journalism. We’ve spent the last decade charting the rise of dot coms and now social media companies.

We provide editorial consultancy services to large and small companies and we run editorial and social media training.

Contact info@customcommunication.co.uk or visit www.customcommunication.co.uk to learn more about our work.

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