Mr. Evans has some very interesting thoughts on social networks. He postulates that the value of an online social network is based on network effects. If people choose to go to another online social network — for example switching from MySpace to Facebook — their friends will likely follow them; no matter how long they’ve been with the service.
There are many reasons people might switch between services:
- No more friends on the network
- A need to “detox” and just get away from the service (like some people do when deactivating their Facebook accounts)
- A lack of real world relationships being accurately captured by the service (the example being LinkedIn connections with people you met years ago but have not come in contact with again).
All interesting thoughts pertaining to social networks both physical and digital.