Last week, our class got into lengthy discussion about the possibility of creating a new social network for the Media Studies Department at CUA. During this conversation, I was very skeptical of any potential success especially in the face of the all mighty Facebook. Ironically, with the launch of Facebook's new Groups just a few days ago, it seems as if Facebook was listening to our conversation.
Facebook's new Groups product does everything that we were discussing in class. It allows people to make private and closed groups where only people who are invited can participate. People can chat, share documents, email members, and much more. Also, people are able to control all aspects of the privacy. Here's a story about the product: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/10/06/group-email-chat-api/
I believe that it is better to stay within the Faceboom frame because everyone is already there, and all the work is done for you. In the past, groups have tried to start their own social networks, but have utterly failed. In 2008, the College Republican National Committee created their own network called "Storm," which was supposed to organize all College Republicans across the country to help the GOP cause, but it failed due to the fact that it had the glitches of many early social networks, and many college students didn't want to join a network and use it to do just one thing. I feel that the same would happen to the Media Studies' social network.
Yet the whole conversation did bring up an interesting question. What will be the next trend in social media? Perhaps, social media's rate of sharing grew so much that people will want to return back to a more private life on social networks. If people preferred to share less and with fewer people than they do on Facebook, then I think that CUA Media Studies social network could actually succeed. Yet until that trend begins, Facebook will always have the advantage over small social networks.
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