One of my good high-school friends signed up for Facebook last week.
Yes, the same Facebook that, had you listened to the digerati, has jumped the shark.
But Facebook hasn’t jumped the shark. It’s still becoming more popular and adding more features. Facebook may have jumped the shark for the kinds of people who have to try every social networking service in its alpha-invite-only stage, but it certainly hasn’t for everyday people.
It’s great to have friends who are pushing the envelope, and to be with people who are willing to try new things. I love my digerati friends. But we cannot lose sight of what the average person is doing.
When I say non-wired, I don’t mean someone without a mobile phone, computer or the Internet. But I mean people who don’t live and breathe Web 2.0. In fact, they probably don’t read Wired magazine, and isn’t that the ultimate barometer of one’s wiredness?
Let’s look at Twitter as a good example. If you just listened to bloggers and the digerati you would think that Twitter is the hottest thing going today on the Web. Oh wait, it’s jumped the shark because of frequent outages recently.
In reality, Twitter has less than 2 million users in the world. In many ways, Twitter isn’t even mainstream, let alone clones like Pownce. In comparison, Facebook has more than 70 million active users.
My friend is like the majority of Americans — high school diploma, has a computer with Internet, uses a mobile phone but doesn’t have a blog, probably doesn’t know what the hell Web 2.0 is supposed to mean (does anyone, really?) and probably has no interest in joining Twitter.
Ultimately, we have to build products that not only interest people on the cutting edge, but that also provide functionality that average person can and will want to use everyday.
For my friend, the time was right to join Facebook because its functionality made sense for him. I don’t think he’ll be joining Twitter (or FriendFeed) anytime soon.
