The Twitter rumor mill is in overdrive this week over the impending launch of a Twitter owned photo sharing service. This combined with the purchase of the Ad bidding platform ‘AdGrok’ points to Twitters monetization goals. To get some perspective on these strategic moves, we need to examine how earlier social networks failed and some succeeded in building internal media sharing platforms.
At the height of MySpace’s popularity it was the king of social networks, FaceBook was just a pup and YouTube was cementing itself as the de facto video platform. Home internet speeds were increasing, web cams were cheap and video was starting come into it’s own as a means of self expression on the web. The moment was right for MySpace to build their own video network and create a home for its millions of users to share clips of themselves online. For whatever reason, perhaps the upfront cost of a new video delivery network or just lack of foresight on the part of upper management, they opted not to.
The end result was that YouTube became the video platform of choice for MySpace users. Their user base found a new place to hang out online and the lucrative video advertising revenue went to Youtube with them. MySpace in essence built Youtube into the power house it is today. Conversely, YouTube’s ascent foretold the demise of MySpace. Bands learned that they could promote themselves far more effectively via video on YouTube than music samples on MySpace. The ability for anyone to record themselves performing and potentially garner millions of views gave rise to the YouTube star ie, Justin Bieber and Susan Boyle.
By the time MySpace got around to building a viable video platform, FaceBook was on their heels and was siphoning off users to a cleaner more organized interface. FaceBook for their part were fast learners, they knew the importance of controlling how people shared media on social networks. Hence they designed FaceBook around sharing and tagging photos.
Twitter to launch photo sharing service
Twitter’s move to purchase AdGrok and build their own photo sharing service shows they’ve learnt from the mistakes of MySpace and are building off of the success of FaceBook. With the proliferation of mobile phones cameras, photo and video sharing is now an instinctual part of tweeting. Twitter cannot afford to have the Twitpics and Yfrogs of the world become the next Youtube on the back of their hard labor.
Twitter intends to control and monetize all media shared through it’s network.
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