Do You Need Another Friend(.io)?

I was at a meeting today and one of the attendees started to talk about the new social network called Friend.io.  In fact, he shared an article about how it was growing and he said that he’s heard that it could take over Facebook.  Here’s the article.
http://dhbusinessledger.com/main.asp?SectionID=107&SubSectionID=197&ArticleID=4883

My thoughts on this.

Friend.io will grow and find it’s niche. I believe it will be a niche though for people who want to remain private and just communicate with their social circles. I do not believe it will grow and explode to take over Facebook or even Google Plus for that matter (although I could be wrong).

Why?

In the latest issue of Businessweek, there’s an article which talks about how Facebook Japan is now the fastest growing social network in Japan even over Twitter and Japan’s own home grown network. Japan is notoriously known for it’s privacy and even calling people after hours is like walking in their home with shoes on (or so says the article). So Facebook never took hold because of the culture of privacy over there.

This may be a good market for Friend.io if they expand to Japan. So what’s changed though? Why is Facebook Japan growing so fast in a country where privacy is the ipso facto?

Turns out that after the Tsunami last year people have been using Facebook to connect with lost friends and family. This is only possible with public profiles and public information. Japan is now seeing the power of sharing things publicly and it’s changing their culture.

Friend.io is fulfilling a niche and meeting a need for people who want everything to stay private. Google Plus also grew popular because of that need and their implementation of Circles. Facebook is also losing a lot of members because it now has to monetize the site in order to appease investors (as if $4 billion a year isn’t enough money – of course, when you’re valued at $100 billion, it isn’t). So the more frustrated users become with Facebook, the more users will flock towards other social networks like Friend.io or Google Plus.

It’ll be interesting to see how things play

out. In the mean time, I claimed my profile – and my name on the network and I suggest you do the same. My link is http://www.Friend.io/Chaffee

Of course if you go to my link you won’t see anything unless you log in. It’s private you know.