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A Day In the Life of Privacy
wiredmikey writes "Here's an interesting read on the state of privacy and how technology, along with government and social media have changed the idea, and reality of privacy forever. The article takes the reader through a typical day, and highlights many of the privacy issues that we face, from our mobile phones, Internet at local coffee shops, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, all the way down to cars equipped with OnStar, public cameras, facial recognition technology and more. The author concludes everyday we make compromises in the face of Privacy, and none of us will ever have as much privacy as we want."
The barrier to entry is practically insurmountable due to the network effect.
Not really.
Facebook's temporary success was mostly due to the fact that they targeted college students. The college years are when most people start to form their lifelong "social networks". The 20's are when most people refine and petrify those networks.
However...every year, rough 140,000,000 people are born on this planet. If you target this year's 140M new high school seniors, or 140M new college freshmen, with a new and better "social networking" service, they will jump on it, because their social connections are still in flux, and the social overlap across years at those ages is relatively small.
If anything, the new HS seniors and college freshmen will pull older college freshmen and sophomores and juniors over to their new "social networking" service.
The first mover advantage simply does not apply here. Facebook is doomed. The only question was whether Goldman Sachs could make a few $100M's off of Facebook before it disappears. And that is exactly what they did with their "special purpose investment vehicle" back in January of this year. Dumb money paid those $100M's for no promises. Restribution of the stupid wealth. The next 12 months is the end game.