SocialNetworking 3.0

Fighting in a already saturated market?

How do Web 2.0 companies earn their money? Some don’t have income at all, hoping that a miracle similar to Google’s will happened to them, or that they will be bought by some bigger company before the last cash has been burned. Others sell advertising space on their websites, send advertising mail to their users (some call it spam) and, in the worst case, all their users’ information to whoever is willing to pay: “…we may transfer information collected from Users in connection with a sale of our business”.
Relying on advertising only is a risky type of monoculture, however, nobody seems to have found any viable alternatives. Making users pay is a “fata morgana”; of course users will become dependent upon some services, like e-mail, but only a small percentage will pay for “premium services”, as there is always a competitor, who offers the service for “free” aka advertising.
To increase their advertising income, Web 2.0 companies need more pageviews, more unique users, more valid e-mail addresses and, best of all, as targeted advertising pays more than flat banners, they need more information about the user, his likes and dislikes, his friends, his job etc, because. And this is precisely what users of social networks offer and what providers need. Strange that it turned out that way. Honi soi qui mal y pense.
However, I think that we are reaching a saturation in social network sites. It doesn’t make much sense to be present in more than 2-3 social networks, if you found your “friends” and interests, if you invested time and effort in socializing, you won’t continue to leave all this easily for some new site, where you would have to start all over, unless the new site has exceptionally new and exiting features.
There is an additional problem arising. With the upcoming recession one should expect a shrinking willingness of real-world companies to buy advertising space.
What happens in a real-world saturated market? Like in a zero-sum game, what company A will gain, selling a product to the user, company B will loose. This is easy in the real world: company A’s car has more (perceived) value than company B’s. With social networking things should be a bit different and more difficult.
What is the business idea you will need to attract users to your site?
Why not try to offer to aggregate all your data in one place and administer it from there?
“We will handle all your Google and Yahoo groups! We will keep your accounts in sync on all social networks, job boards and other sites. We'll make sure that your profiles are up to date everywhere with one click of a button. Chat with your buddies on every major IM network in a single buddylist. Login with the IM account you already have, there's nothing to download or install, and it's totally free.”
This is the promise of sites like grouply.com, meebo.com or atomkeep.com.
Of course you need to give them login and password of all your sites, you fully trust them, don’t you? You didn’t read their privacy policy nor their terms of service?
There is evidence in internet forums that at least some of them do read all your private information, that they send unwanted email (in your name) to all your friends and acquaintances, and that they change your mail-return address to their domain. Furthermore it seems rather difficult to unsubscribe from this type of service. As one of the results you have to change the passwords on all sites, where you are member.
Of course your “service aggregator” with every new user automatically gets access to at least two times the valuable information, that normal social networking sites have to work for. It seems some kind of value highjacking, which, as a consequence, may indirectly increase the already difficult economic situation of Web 2.0 companies.