What comes after Facebook

Given that the blogworld is abuzz with Googlers option-surfi... - sorry, fulfilling their creative potential - to Facebook, it is interesting to think about what will cause them all to surf out again once it IPO's - Dave McClure has 3 assertions on how to beat Facebook (Broadstuff abridged version):

ASSERTION #1: Facebook doesn't get Intimacy.

Facebook is full of my "friends", but it's not a great place to hang with my BEST friends (aka "BFF").....

.....I've got too many goddamn friends on Facebook.

yeah, that's right: i've got over 2,000 "friends" on FB, and it's fucking KILLING me.

ASSERTION #2: The stuff that's really valuable in my social graph tends to the extremes -- very public (ex: Twitter) or very private (ex: email).

look, it's either Gaga, Shaq, & Glee (extremely public, better on Twitter than Facebook) or else it's only my closest buddies (u know, the evil VCs I collude with at Bin38 to fuck over YC startups).

The stuff that's meaningful -- NOTE TO STARTUPS: MEANINGFUL=MONETIZABLE -- that stuff is either better on Twitter, or better with a much more private & select subset of my friends on Facebook.

- the very public: well here it's pretty obvious Twitter has an advantage over Facebook. the asymmetric follow model and constrained, lightweight communication make it MUCH easier to engage aspirationally with celebrities & famous people on Twitter than on Facebook.

- the very private: now, here you'd think Facebook has the upper hand -- and they do, but they're at risk of being upstaged by a more private & meaningful social network (or perhaps via some subset or abstraction layer on top of FB, if they can move quickly)....

...somewhere, there's going to be a smaller more Intimate conversation that enable a different type of sharing... lots of it.

ASSERTION #3: Intimacy depends on Context, Connection, & Continuity... which determine Closeness... and ultimately, drive Commerce.

One might suggest that Intimacy is determined by:

1. Shared Context (ex: basketball, school we went to, fans of Glee)
2. [strength of] Connection (how much we like each other, how strong)
3. Continuity (how long we've known each other, how freq/recently we connect).

For any possible social interaction, and for any potential subset of friends within your social graph, these factors determine a minimum critical level of Intimacy required to initiate & sustain the conversation around that interaction. Too little Intimacy, and the conversation stops. But with the right amount of Intimacy, the conversation literally explodes with information.

I'd buy Assertion 1, and i think he is onto something with Assertion 2 - that the value is in the polarities - but I think Assertion 3 highlights the chimera in all this, ie that it drives Commerce.

It is my view that Social Commerce is a Pull, not a Push, function, and the successful platforms are enablers rather than enforcers. Different culture - and probably revenue model. Since the beginning of time we have gone down to the market square to trade, and the pub to meet friends. Sometimes the pub is at the market square, but it has a different role.

Different places different functions, same people