The "shrink effect"

Caution: this is a rant, and as with many of my rants it may contain run- on sentences, and tenuous logic. You have been warned!!

I have no idea if this is a real notion or if it already has a name, but I am going to call it the “shrink effect”. The “shrink effect” is the notion that technology is merging together. Let me give you an example. In the world of instant messaging there is AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook, Gchat, Skype, and I am sure I am missing a couple of big ones, but it really does not matter to my point.

If everyone you communicate with was only on one of these than this would not matter, but the fact is that most people have their friends spread out through at least a couple of these applications. I, personally, am only on Gchat and therefore only talk to people on Gchat (but I am different). I do this because I like the Gchat interface within Gmail and since I am logged in to Gmail all day it makes sense to use the chat feature. I have friends that still use AIM, and some people I used to play WoW with all used MSN. I am a stick-in-the-mud and only talk to people on Gchat. However, people that want to talk to their friends across the different networks can download third party software that will connect all these different chats; for instance Pigden.

Pigden allows you to log into all your different chat accounts and have them all in the same place, so you don’t need to run many different apps to converse with your friends. Pigden is an example of the “shrinking effect." With Pigden, there is one place to chat with everyone, despite the fact that they are actually on different services.

Another example is Tweetdeck, the third party Twitter application. With Tweetdeck you can use your Twitter account, but you can also have it interface with Facebook, allowing you to send your status updates to both through the single interface. Again we are shrinking two services down to one.

I think that this notion of shrinking is going to continue. We will see it not just in terms of chat, but for internet log in. OpenID is an example of this. It allows you to log into it and have your log in be used in several places on the internet. Logging into Google gives you access to a ton of personalized functionality like your documents, your blogs, your email, your reader, your news, etc. With one log in, I get access to a ton of functionality and I can interact with other peoples' Google functionality with their own ID. I can comment on their blogs, share reader items and documents with them all. Facebook wants to be this too; this is why they have instant messaging as well as voice chat which is on the way. In Facebook’s case, they want to be the one-stop-shop for all your social interaction. I would not be surprised if Facebook implemented a way to blog and have that blog available to yours friends. With a Facebook log in, you have access to the whole Facebook framework where you are already connected to your friends and family. If everyone is on Facebook already and Facebook had instant messaging and voice chat with one log in, you are now connected to and can interact seamlessly with those people. You don’t have to give out separate user names for different applications in order to have people interact with you, no longer will you need to put your AIM name into Facebook for people to message you - they can just do it through Facebook. While I think that Facebook is currently too bloated (see my other entries about that) they are continuously improving their interface.

Google already has a really good integration and has been moving towards more social features, but it does not have the social connectivity that Facebook already has. Even if they did implement something like this, Facebook already has the market share. I don’t think that this will be a sudden thing, but one day we will wake up and realized that all our interactions are taking place in one place rather than through several different mediums, and Facebook want to be this place.

Another example of the "shrink effect" is Pay Pal. Pay Pal wants to be the one place for all your online financial transactions. The idea is that with a Pay Pal account, you only need one log in to buy, or sell online. I think that this is the way to go, however, it requires that all the online sellers get in bed with Pay Pal. Google has something like this too. Whichever company is able to make themselves the fully integrated method of payment online will have a huge market place and it will be very hard for other companies to infiltrate the space. (Also, Hey newspaper industry! Incorporate yourselves with Pay Pal and you can make micro payment work, but you all need to be on board!)

This entry is a lot of me kind of rambling, and why not? That’s what I do, but something to just note here is that there will always be new things popping up all the time. However, these will be used by the fringes and will not have the same level of exposure to the masses (I mean the masses thing that the internet is the Internet Explorer icon). Innovation will continue but I expect that these innovations will start out as things unto themselves and will then be incorporated by the big players as they take on popularity. For instance, I think that Twitter will eventually be bought and integrated into either Facebook or Google. I am not sure what the end result of that integration would be, but I can see this happening and, hell, Facebook has already made their Status very Twitter like. I even see people @replying to each other on Facebook. Basically, the big players in social media will win by being a one-stop-shop for everything. A place where you can go and be fully integrated with everything you need to communicate and live online.