The Next Thing?

NathanKingerlee

Does anyone have any ideas on what is the next Facebook/Twitter/YouTube to watch out for and get involved with, from a business to customer interaction point of view?

(I posted this in the Tech section also, but I think it'll get more appropiate replies here)

tomED

Hi Nathan

That's just almost impossible to guess. Even Facebook has evolved into something that is almost unrecognisable from what it was when it started.

Although things change quickly on the web front, I can't see Facebook going away for a long time yet and it's most definitely the most popular place on the web for interacting with your existing and potential customers.

Anyway, chances are that the first place you hear about that next big thing will be either on Twitter or Facebook (if of course you are already interacting there!)

Mozart1986

I know what it is but you wouldn't believe me if I told you;)

The reason the FB & Googles of the world are so exciting is because they come out of nowhere. If people could say what they are then everybody would be doing it and it wouldn't be exciting.

Also, the reason FB made it is very subtle, you wouldn't have guessed that they would be the monster they are today 4 or 5 years ago. In fact, they actually made what is often called a cardinal error. They ignored the market and went with their intuitions. Before the news feed they were just another social network like myspace, friendster & Bebo, to mention just the famous ones. When they brought in the News feed 10% of their users protested (thats 10% of 10,000,000 users!:eek:) and the Paulo Alto police told them to shut it down because there was going to be a riot and they didn't have the man-power to quell such violence. But FB went with their gut and that means they had the balls to do what Bebo & Myspace didn't. Things could have been totally different if circumstances had been only slightly different.

So thats why nobody can ever say for sure what the next big thing is... but you can make a guestimate.

Oh yeah... that doesn't count me, I am currently building the next LinkedIn, Facebook & Etsy combined, but an entrepreneur, once he starts, has to have devine confidence:)

mikefm

Supposedly the Collison brothers (ex Young Scientist) are working on a "game changer" in Silicon Valley...

Mozart1986

Anyone that has any ambition & a good idea thinks they have a "game-changer", and then the market changes and your excellent product is completely obsolete in what seems like an instant. Things are running so fast now that nobody knows what will happen in the next 5 years, let alone who will be the next Mark Zuckerberg. A lot of people are wondering whether Google will exist in the same way, what will become of search engines if the internet breaks up into isolated networks like FB that don't allow access to their data bases. And the two-tier internet is only going to re-inforce that trend. Its all impossible to say if people are questioning the longevity of Google:/

betterman

its not a question of whats next in relation to websites. its a case of whats next with reguards to the internet.
If you look at web 3.0 it promises the next generation of social networking will be compleatly different. It looks at your cookies and could post news on your fav sites automatically.