The One Stop Social Shop
Social. Or How people waste their time in the 21st century.
I’d like to store my social wastage in 1 spot. Now, there are too many to name. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Linkedin, Myspace, Spotify, Flickr, SlideShare, Trip Advisor, ∞
I get it: you’d like us to share stuff. You’d like us to connect. Engage and forever stay connected.
But my social user behaviour has completely shifted. Instead of ‘Wasting my time’ on social media – stalking my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s profile (I would never!), scrolling through pages of useless news feeds and ‘Liking’ a random’s brainfarts, I have started using social media differently. I made it a tool to make my life easier. Do the things I would have done in the pre-digital world – but more efficiently.
FACEBOOK – banter
TWITTER – reading paper headlines.
PINTEREST – scrapbooking.
MYSPACE – radio.
INSTAGRAM – storing photos
LINKEDIN – networking
Admittedly, social is fun. But here is a question. Why is not one provider giving me all of these services – and more? Where is my One Stop Social Shop? Why is no-one doing it?
I am sick of setting up new accounts, making up new passwords. And I am sure I’m not the only one. I have a slight form of FOMO, so I will continue to sign up to interesting new services, it’s just a bit of a pain. And it’s not just social media, it’s online shopping too. I want the whole package in one. Charles the Great wasn’t great because he thought France would be enough. And you, social media service, should strive to be great.
So here the plan. You give me a turnkey solution. ‘A’, as in; 1, not 20 different platforms.
SOCIAL – share with friends
Profile/ Blog/ Wall/ Friends/ Friends News Feed/ Life Chat/ Food/ Travel advisor/ Birthday calendar/ Social gaming/ events
PERSONAL – keep track of your interests
Notes/ Document storage/ Vault/ Library (RSS reader & Books)/ Search/ Video/ Music/ Calendar/ Job listing/ email/ Gaming/ Professional networking/ Likes
A lot of these services are provided by Google (YouTube, Gmail, Reader, Google+, Search, News, Drive), I only wish it was more integrated.
COMMERCE – stay in touch with your favourite brands
Brand pages/ One ecommerce site or apps/ Product reviews/ NFC or check-ins/ Forums/ Brand news feeds
I feel Facebook should keep the brand and friend feed separate. It would feel so much less spammy if I voluntarily enter my Facebook Commerce page and interact with brands when I feel like it. At the moment it’s all a bit messy and I am constantly inclined to hide brand posts. And I still prefer a website over a Facebook page for purchasing purposes. But that could change.
F-commerce is slowly being accepted in people’s minds, but now also Twitter-integrated payment systems to buy and sell via a simple Tweet reply are emerging. A couple of the T-commerce providers are: Chirpify, Plu$tter and BuyReply.
To see the Tweet-a-Beer app at SXSW, click here
http://mashable.com/2012/03/08/tweet-a-beer-app-paypal/#53011All-Done
The online world has become highly intrusive and can easily overcomplicate our daily lives. We benefit and suffer from it. There is no escaping, no standing still. We’re Always On (AO).
I would just like to recycle my social waste, that’s all I ask for.
Sources
http://chrysalis.deepend.com.au/trends-and-insights/ecommerce/facebook-rolls-out-want-able-pics-of-products-in-the-news-feed
http://www.psfk.com/2012/05/tweet-to-buy-airline-tickets.html
http://buyreply.com/features/how-it-works-via-twitter
https://www.plustter.com/
http://www.fscommerce.com/en/plustter.php
Picture: Mashable
Unfortunately, it seems that social platforms, aren’t as democratically “social” as one might hope … It would be nice if there was a singular “Flipbook” style app that aggregated all discussion and commentary, but I guess that various social channels wouldn’t want to play nice with regards to open access and aggregation .. Each preferring to try and monopolise the traffic and the conversation .. Trillian managed to do it for chat .. What about a bit of liberte’ egalite’, fraternite’ for social ?
Nice article Kim 🙂
I completely agree with you on the subject of there being too many decentralized points of social online interaction. I think the key points for such an application would be:
– Easy to customize
– Light and functional feel about it with minimum clutter
– Heavy users should be able to be to create an extended profile out of it should they desire this.
Perhaps this is a product Deepend can develop in not too distant future 😉
Great article Kim. I have been asking myself the same question for about a year now. Well, a similar question at least. I love LinkedIn. I have a love/hate (mostly hate these days) relationship with Facebook. I can’t embrace Twitter. I find Instagram confusing. And I hear Justin Timberlake is trying to bring MySpace back but quite frankly I don’t know what for…
Yes I want to be able to have a meaningful relationship with my social network online. Yes I want to consume information about brands that I actually have an interest on. And yes, I like being able to connect with my professional peers. But more and more when I try to log on to these platforms I find that to connect with the people I want to I first have to sift through a plethora of advertising junk that according to my usage algorithm should interest me (note: they don’t. I know I’m a nearly 30-year old woman with children but my interests do go outside of just botox, conflict-free diamonds and weight-loss).
The trends that people are moving away from these platforms in droves will continue until someone builds the platform that you have suggested.
I’d put up my hand but I’m too busy with my botox, diamond shining and weight-loss treatments.
Facebook currently offer most of functionality outlined in the diagram above. If history is anything to go by, I would say their product roadmap already revolves around being the “one stop social shop”.
The question we need to ask is: Is it actually good for us for one organisation to be all things to all people? Economics teaches us that competition driven by market forces is a good thing, speeding up the process of innovation, providing us with new features quicker, and even giving us utilities we never thought we needed. If Facebook eliminated their competitors and owned the social world, you can be sure that the user experience would deteriorate over time.
Rather than convergence of social functionality to a single platform or destination, the real race we should be watching is convergence of identity – both Facebook and Google are fighting the battle to provide us with a single sign-on that will carry across not only our “soclal media” lives, but also extend into other areas of our “real world” lives. We’re seeing it already in location based services, and we’ll start to see even more when payment arrives.
So I would say: rather than a “one stop shop”, expect the social ecosystem to evolve into a splintered experience across many disparate touchpoints, but all united through a single identity that knows who we are, who are friends are, where we live, what we buy, and what kind of pizza toppings we like. The result will be further fragmentation of niche interests, with everyday experiences tailored to suit who we are as individuals. The days of segmenting a consumer base by demo-geo-guesswork will be replaced by hypertargeted experiences that give you what YOU want.
Big brother is just around the corner, and I can’t wait.
An interesting read Kim, I’m personally a fan of Google+, but I thought you might be interested in another project called Diaspora.
One of the focus points for the Diaspora social network is that everyone would run their own “pod” and pods would talk to other pods in a distributed fashion. You could customise your pod however you liked, including RSS feeds from your favourite news sites etc. The pod would be hosted for you by a provider, or at home if you’re technically minded, the source code for Diaspora is open to everyone to download and add to. Because you own your pod, your photos never leave your possession, what would happen to your photos if Facebook went under tomorrow. What rights have you given up to Facebook to use your photos for themselves? You choose who’s pods you connect to in order to maintain your own level of privacy.
One of the early financial backers of Diaspora was Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook fame. I guess he may have seen that the open source nature of Diaspora would allow everyone to have their own personal social network with just the features they want.
Andy.
I’ll check that one out!
Interesting comments guys!
@Jen – haha hilarious
@Amer – you’re right, a monopoly wouldn’t do any good. I guess what Chris suggests would be a solution to that (but yes, what players would be likely to participate… and would it be a practical mess?)
Hi sister!
You should check this app out: http://flipboard.com/
It’s not a one stop social shop, but it does combine most of the popular social networking apps, news feeds, personal interests,.. all in one handy app 😉
Greetings from home!
Brother Tim 😉