Our Social Infrastructure

Business is being done on Social Media every day.  Lots of it.  Companies are entirely founded on leveraging the power of social media for sales, marketing, and research.

Today a mini ripple went through the community when Techcrunch speculated about Facebook’s financial Health.  Venture Beat slowed this speculation somewhat.

Underneath this is a very real fear.  Sites like Twitter have no visible means of support.  How long can they continue to be a backbone of information and conversation?  What happens to the businesses that have been built on these platforms?

The common argument is that someone else will come along and build something else, if services disappear.  This is akin to the “technological fix” argument for the environment.  If we pollute too much, we’ll create a new tech to fix it.

Maybe it’s a better argument here, but is it a sound one?

Technorati Tags: facebook,twitter,techcrunch,venturebeat,social media,infrastructure,sustainability

Comments

[Jo]

We love Facebook and Twitter too much to let them die.

I gave a presentation last week to a uni. why should they get involved in social media.
I haven't been able to phrase it simply. My thinking is like this.

Uni's have always had a value chain of research and a more visible revenue chain of students - a bit like google with 95% effort into research and 95% of revenue from advertising.

My thinking is that information "about" a business/sector has become freely available. If I switch my metaphor, it is a bit like a farmer who doesn't buy up his/her mining rights for his farm. In comes the prospector and the farmer finds the prospector has rights over and above the farmer's rights of ownership and farming.

Am I in the right direction?