People didn't sign up for Friendster, Myspace, or Facebook based on an invite. Social networks take up a lot of their own space and with Facebook for personal, Twitter for media/marketing/information/distribution, and Salesforce taking the attention on the social enterprise construct over smaller options like Yammer, etc.
Search for the most part is a tool. E-mail is a tool. Office productivity applications are mainly tools. Personalized and direct.
The social experience is different - you dont use Facebook because its useful itself, you use it because you get facility out of the fact others use it. Inclusion matters.
This is a different problem entirely. Google always approaches a space from a technology angle. Its the difference between "this code solves the problem" and "this code contributes to a full vision."
Receiving and acting on an invite attempts to give access special meaning, as if the getting an invite is all you need to make the pain go away.
The truth is while early adopters and media will jump on in with excitement, the vast majority of people who use Facebook will continue to use Facebook.
The reason they didn't take off exponentially in my eyes isn't based on release date as much as it is a technology/culture mismatch when taking the product to market. This is an internal gestalt in Google most likely, and externally manifests as a branding problem.
Search for the most part is a tool. E-mail is a tool. Office productivity applications are mainly tools. Personalized and direct.
The social experience is different - you dont use Facebook because its useful itself, you use it because you get facility out of the fact others use it. Inclusion matters.
This is a different problem entirely. Google always approaches a space from a technology angle. Its the difference between "this code solves the problem" and "this code contributes to a full vision."
Receiving and acting on an invite attempts to give access special meaning, as if the getting an invite is all you need to make the pain go away.
The truth is while early adopters and media will jump on in with excitement, the vast majority of people who use Facebook will continue to use Facebook.
The reason they didn't take off exponentially in my eyes isn't based on release date as much as it is a technology/culture mismatch when taking the product to market. This is an internal gestalt in Google most likely, and externally manifests as a branding problem.