Cosential

An interesting post in All Things Digital “When Twitter Met Facebook: The Acquisition Deal That Fail-Whaled” by Kara Swisher about the deal that FaceBook tried to make for Twitter. It seems that Mark Zuckerberg started to believe his own press how valuable his company is. I am reminded of a time back during the dot com boom I met a CEO of a recently public company who after he told me his name told me he was worth $30 million. I felt that was really strange, but just filed it away. Of course his company was worth less than a million 2 years later. Mark Zuckerberg reminds me of this guy, except the numbers have a few more zeros.

Here is the problem, I really like Brightkite better than Twitter. Social networks are fashion, and my mood changes every couple of years. It is too easy to change networks. Ha you say. All my friends are on FaceBook. Well they will be somewhere else in a few years. And soon with portability, they will be everywhere. The idea of a public walled garden was great back in the day. The current social networks , as primitive as they are, remind me of Boston Common. You know everyone lived close to each other and shared the same land to graze their animals. Lots of people were there and everyone’s friend went there so everyone wanted to go there. Notice how that business model lasted.

The compression of time for social networks is now warp speed. Twitter now is starting to feel old to me just as it hits it’s hockey stick moment. When I met Scoble a few weeks ago he told me that he used Friend Feed because it kept the noise level down and Twitter was just too loud. I am sure he will be on to the next thing soon as well. Why the rant, well because of the extreme hype and valuations of social networks. FaceBook should have cashed in and so should have Twitter. If I were an investor in Twitter or FaceBook I would be asking where is the money because the winds of change blow fast in social network world.

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