Attention Deficit Interactive Disorder (Saturated Market)

Attention Deficit Interactive Disorder

Within the past week, some of my friends got into a food fight, some others spent their day putting graffiti on walls, and a handful turned into Zombies. If you're in tune with social media, you'll know I'm talking about Facebook. Since the site opened their doors to outside programmers, newsfeeds have been inundated with a slew of notifications that so-and-so added one application while someone else got rid of another.

There is a lot of debate over this issue; depending on what side of the fence you're on, the applications are either the best or worst thing to happen to Facebook (just like when they brought in the newsfeed, or the site redesign). What I find interesting is the inspiration for many of these applications, and the "lifespan" for them.

Haven't I seen this before?

Just in case the "status" bar wasn't enough, you can tell everyone what your mood is. To keep track of your most visited friends' pages, you can have a box of your top friends. Kinda like livejournal's mood setting and MySpace's top friends box. And many of the other applications are derived from the old Memes and quizzes you would find on every livejournal page. This is part of the current general concern that Facebook is diluting its unique position in the social media market. You could say that it's an advantage to bring all these different components together into one place; but on the other hand, if you try to be something to everyone, you'll won't be anything to anyone.

That's SO last month

For every application added, I seem to see an application dropped from friends' pages. Often the same application; as Jim picks it up, Sally ditches it. These little icons seem to stick around only as long as they are novel; once it gets old, it's gone. Often these are even replaced by slightly tweaked versions of themselves. Ditch the "Superpoke" for the "X Me". The cyclical nature makes these seem fairly pointless, really. Why add it if you will only remove it in a week or two? This is especially a nuisance for friends because to use someone else's application, you have to add it yourself.

The slipping point

As time goes by and more applications come and go (along with new social media sites), I think we're soon going to reach the point where Facebook has to solidify its position among social media or lose its place to the newest site. All it takes is to do right what everyone else does wrong, convince a few users to try it out and invite their friends, and the cycle begins anew.

Until next time,