Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ changed how we communicate. Now, people are familiar with social networking, and most importantly that means they’re comfortable with liking, retweeting, reblogging and sharing.
One great thing about sharing becoming mainstream is that any good content that’s out there has an easier time flowing to us through our networks.
Compared to the behaviours of sharing and liking links that social networks encourage, making original content is still hard work. Things like writing, producing YouTube videos, coding and making products can only get so easy.
Startups looking to base their businesses on giving friends new ways to communicate are going to have a hard time proving their worth and why the world needs them. Now, successful innovators aren’t the ones making new platforms for us to communicate, they’re the ones making those difficult activities easier and more accessible.
Take Instagram, Mixel, and Tumblr for example. These three companies make photography, art, and blogs easy to get, easy to manage, and fun. Plus, now that everyone understands the concept of sharing and because the communications networks have already been established, those start-ups can make each activity a social one.
Another distinctive quality of these start-ups is that they are evolving ideas. It’s weird for me to say that Instagram is a service that solves a consumer photography need. It feels a lot more appropriate to say it’s changing the nature of what photography is, just as Tumblr is doing for blogging, and just as Mixel is doing for art.
These are the start-ups I look forward to seeing more of.
Open Mode 