Social networking

Microblogging: Trouble for network bandwidth?

Twitter, the “What are you doing” less-than-texting concept, is gaining a lot of buzz, users and funding. Monetizing any social network has proved difficult, and Twitter’s simple approach makes it harder than usual to see how ads might work there, but it still raises a troubling question for networks. Is the real service of the future more signaling than bandwidth? Clearly you can’t be twittering video stuff to each other; and few people have the time for an activity that must occur regularly and also consumes a lot of capacity.

If casual social microblogging is the prototype of future services, then network bandwidth and bandwidth production could be in deep trouble. We believe that the telco side of the market needs to be thinking about how to make casual bit-intensive activities as attractive as short text messages and blogs, or face some unpleasant consequences.

Comcast to buy Plaxo

Comcast is buying social network and photo site Plaxo, and plans to integrate it into Comcast’s offerings, perhaps even creating a set-top box that could be used to “tune” to Plaxo sites and view pictures. The move is one of several recent steps taken by content and network firms to gain access to web properties for exploitation, and it seems to show that the whole sector is now looking for positive symbiosis among a variety of customer-reaching strategies, perhaps to stave off price competition. In Comcast’s case, we believe it is a step to attempt to hold profit and revenue in a market where satellite and RBOC competitors are generating significant pressure

Cisco Dips Toe into “New Media”?

Cisco made an exploratory foray into the new media space at its C-scape conference, with a short discussion of its architecture for social and entertainment portals, EOS. This open-source framework is expected to be available to developers in 2008. There were no real details of Cisco’s plans here, and it is widely believed that the step is so far more exploratory than a commitment to significant resources or efforts.