Disapora picked up media attention to early in the game... That kind of coverage may not happen again or be entertained by people who were once engaged... Concept can remain but surfacing it to the public will be difficult.
Orkut is quite strong in India... but theres plenty of market still to capture there so I Wouldn't be surprised if a couple of networks tried to capture that market...
Thanks, article seems interesting but "news feed" was an innovation that came in after the steady success of facebook (profiles, friends etc..etc.. that went viral over a tightly knit social crowd and spread from there).. Incremental innovations are what I see can get a startup in the rankings.. I found duckduckgo is really cool but still wouldn't appeal to the general population but blekko seems interesting..
This is the technology industry which means that you can't stand around for a long period of time without expecting or preparing for another entry. There are other startups coming in the scene addressing this issue of "privacy" and "open source" etc... With time Google and Microsoft will follow as well as VCs looking for potential candidates... MySpace could have re-designed their interface and added relevant features to stay competitive rather than switching their focus which was their main down turn. Ex. Microsoft buys yahoo to compete with google... no success.. Microsoft creates bing (sort of like a copy of google) and takes a good share of the market.
Facebook "basically" gave users what myspace and friendster had + some more in a very nice and easy to use format (even though both companies had largely taken over the market based on our expectations at the time - p.s. expectations change). Is that what a startup can do in this area to potentially "viral" and gain AT THE LEAST 100,000 members? Ex. StudioVZ, Chinese facebook copy etc...
Expectations of a market take over can now be defined as 500 mill members and in 2004 and on myspace was considered at the top of its game etc... you guys probably see what im getting at. But 2004 and now is a huge difference with access to computers, technology and cell phones being extremely convenient so is 500 mill a REALLY BIG NUMBER or Can it get even BIGGER in the future?