"Is Facebook Overrated?," from last week's Time Magazine, is a rare article on social networking that I enjoyed reading.
Anita Hamilton suggests that
"Social networks are a lot like nightclubs, and Friendster was the place to be in 2004 and '05, before MySpace came along and stole its mojo. In short, Friendster got boring." That's exactly what we've been saying for years as it pertains to sites like Friendster, err Myspace...oh wait, what's hip today? Oh yeah, Facebook.
Later Hamilton quotes venture capitalist Jim Timmins of Pagemill Partners who says ""How do you serve up ads in such a fashion that your young, hip audiences aren't turned off by it?" Despite considering myself a pundit that is constantly proselytizing that social networking isn't just for
"young, hip audiences" I applaud when a publication as credible and mainstream as Time reminds everyone that Mypace and Facebook are. It highlights how Multiply is different. As I wrote in
Ironing Out the Wrinkles, Multiply is for everyone.
There was one inconsistency. Hamilton starts out by providing everyday examples of social networking that include "[boring] a neighbor with pictures from your kid's birthday party" and then writes that the "genius of social-networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook lies in their ability to capture the essence of these informal exchanges." But really, how many
"young, hip" people are sharing their kid's photos in virtual nightclubs?
Multiply is ideal...the most ideal... application for sharing things like kids photos and there's nothing hip about that. Thank goodness. A lack of hipness and mojo is why we can never lose our hipness and mojo and that's a pretty exciting thing to think about.
