As stats are gathered, studied and furrow-browed opinions offered on what is dead or dying and what is taking over the world, one of the few things we can say about social networks is that they have the life spans of flies.
Yesterday, I saw Twitter streams of people with their shorts in knots because Andrew Keen referred to the death of Facebook. Twitter, or its variations, will take over due to its real-time aspects. (Of course, Keen loves to provoke - that's his shtick. I'm surprised people get so worked up. He does, however, have interesting and worthwhile observations. He just likes to be annoying while doing it.)
It seems not a week goes by when something else isn't "dead." We've got the death of news, the death of Web 2.0, now the death of Facebook . It's the age of the flavour of the month. Or week. Or day. This "death of" business, however, is really just a kind of rhetorical device. It helps initiate conversations by getting attention, and it also helps to get someone, somewhere fiesty as they jump up to respond.
When it comes to social networks, conversations inevitably focus on the money (and if something is "dead," it ain't goin' to make money). What's Facebook's revenue model? What's Twitter's revenue model? (Keep in mind: online advertising is dead!)
There will be no revenue models. None that are realistic. None that are workable. The life span of all these social media tools is so short, so precarious, so longshot-like, you'd have to be nuts to sink money into them. As soon as you do, everyone's gone somewhere else.
So, with social media plagued by the passing fancy syndrome, perhaps what we're really going to see is the rebirth of the door-to-door salesman?
Update:
I neglected to mention, this musing came about after finding out that now MySpace is dead! (Could it be Willie Loman will rise from the ashes?)
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