How popular are blogs and social networks?

I asked ten people who have nothing to do with the Internet industry what they thought of Orkut, and of MSN Spaces, and of Yahoo! 360. Most of them had not heard of these names, and when I explained what they were, no one was all that interested.

I often wonder how much of what we in the industry get excited about, makes it into the mainstream. For example, Paid Content talks about "hot as hell" del.icio.us (I am not picking on the excellent Paid Content site, it's just an example). But is it all that hot? Take the top tags from deli.cio.us:

blog, web, design, music, programming, software, css, tools, mac, linux, art, blogs, reference, javascript, news, osx, java, python, humor, search, tech, fun, politics, internet, webdesign, del.icio.us, photography, security, games, cool, howto, technology, toread, development, rss, business, php, firefox, flash, tutorial, books, webdev, video, ajax, ruby, science, windows, apple, gtd, xml.

Of those 50, 30-35 are techie tags (depending on what you count). Clearly the users of "hot as hell" deli.cio.us are not your average Joe. No Britney, no sports, no porn. No, these are mostly people like me, industry insiders.

Then there are blogs. As self-publishing mechanisms, they are nothing special. All very nice, but just a posh version of Geocities. The form may get better, and there may be more bells and whistles, but it is a similar thing. The RSS side of things is not yet very widely used; I don't know anyone outside the industry who uses RSS readers. Sites like deli.cio.us are clearly populated by techies, and what the masses use (Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail) do not allow for easy RSS reading.

So, social networking. Friendster has around 13 million users (they claim on their front page) and Orkut has fewer than 10 million (at a guess - I personally am connected to 5 million). No doubt there is a very high level of duplication - the same people across the networks. So the total number of people who are into social networking must be in the low tens of millions. Which is lovely, but nothing spectacular. This is not AIM or Hotmail. I know that social networking is way newer than AIM or Hotmail (on the other hand, Firefox is even newer and has already reached the low tens of millions - and much as Firefox is great stuff, it is nowhere near mass adoption yet), but I don't get the sense that there is a long queue of people waiting to join up. Friendsreunited.co.uk, one of the earliest social networks, has fewer unique visitors now than it did a year ago. Suggesting that it reached and perhaps passed a saturation point.

Any data about how many bloggers or social networkers exist, has to be severely cut back because of the number of people who start out and then abandon the idea. In the UK, the only sites of this broad nature that get a decent number of visitors are Friendsreunited (on the decline) and Tripod (which way predates the whole blogging/social networking age).

The blogging/social networking thing is all very well, but perhaps not as popular as some people believe. And it may have quite a low saturation point. Friendsreunited, for example, was a great success here in the UK, and became a C-list household name, but it was not revolutionary. I think a case can be made that the same will apply to blogging/social networking. I need to think about it some more.

Comments

[Ariel]

Interesting commentary...what are some suggestions for applications around the blogging/social net/tagging etc. that you believe would create momentum in the mass market?

My general belief is that, similar to most network movements, they have to create adoption with the techies (who are usually the early adopters) and then spread to the mass market to gain 'real' adoption. That is why it doesn't surprise me that techies are the primary market right now. This momentum is legitimate because it is redefining the power structure of publishing and distribuition.

[James MacAonghus]

Hm, you don't expect me to have constructive suggestions, surely ;)

You are right that techies tend to be the early adopters. I am not sure whether social networking will ever really take off. The content creation side of it is too much effort and too long-term a commitment. And the networking side does partly address the basic human need for socializing, but without the face-to-face, which might be the key element without which socializing does not work. I would be interested in why it is that the non-techies join the scene, e.g. the many Brazilians on Orkut.

I think what might spur growth is if some of the effort was eliminated. So for example if your Y360 page became your IE homepage, rather than somewhere you had to go to specifically, and it aggregated all your news, email, feeds etc thus making your life easier. Which no doubt will happen, and Yahoo is well positioned to aggregate all that.

The key group of people to watch after the techies will be teenagers. I know that a lot of them do use blogging. But I doubt they use social networks much because they are not allowed - on Orkut, under 18s are not allowed; on Y360, I don't think they are either, and there are no members age 18-19.

[Andy]

Interesting points. Certainly the emerging 'professional' end of blogging and social software world recognise itself as a cliquey and self-regarding community.

Couple of follow up things:
In this article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4421707.stm), there's a nice analogy about rss.

"It's like skiing. As popular as it is, probably less than 5% of people do it. Imagine if everyone did it, it would be scary,".

Also, friendsreunited might be c-list in your eyes, but have you seen their financials? (here: http://am.blogs.com/andymartin/2005/04/friends_reunite.html). They're eye-watering.