Social Networking Technology is a commodity

There are a thousand ways to skin a cat (never understood that saying-It implies skinning a cat is an important part of ones day or something) and there are also a thousand technologies that do the same thing. There will always be dominant players in any industry, and there will always be smaller players trying to unseat the larger ones. Why am I stating the obvious? Because, after reading an article on TechCrunch about Bebo possibly being on the AOL auction block, it reminds me once again, we are all not going to jump on every technology band wagon in masses, just because it is the latest and greatest or received a new round of funding and possibly been bought by a bigger fish.

Success in social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc, result because they were early entries and had the proper direction to give them staying power. When any technology becomes a commodity, people pick one and settle in. Sure you will have digital anthropologists, futurist, technologist (hell I belong to this group) examining new and old players alike, but in the end, even those people will pick the best (usually the biggest and for good reason) and make that their mainstay.

There is not room for every entry to be at the top, nor for everyone to use every social network that comes along. BTW I use Facebook and LinkedIn more frequently than any other, because they are more accessible to the masses and I don't have the time to maintain all the relationships I have in two places, much less 10. If the rumors turn out to be true, I wouldn't blame AOL for dumping Bebo, but at the same time I wouldn't understand why someone else would acquire them, unless they have the next big thing up their proverbial sleeve.