How lack of choice can kill an industry
Robert Young wrote a thought-provoking post today about the future of social networks, and bemoaning the fact that most of the new social network-type applications he sees are pretty much the same. Just like the "everyone wants to be a portal" fad a few years ago, "everyone wants to be a social network" now. And they all seem to be pretty much the same, with very little differentiation.
In The Wisdom of Crowds (a fantastic book which my sister recommended and I'm still working my way through), he notes that in just about every great innovation in history, there needs to be at least a few different choices for everyone to choose from in order to arrive at the best solution. I think what we're seeing here is a case of a whole bunch of the same choice instead of a few different choices, in which case social networks as we know them are in danger of dying because of the lack of variety and choice. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing.
