The analogy is, that YouTube is like GeoCities — in the sense that it provides a fundamental functionality to the end-user. A free server space, for which it’s accessible to the ever-man (and woman) in publishing.

If anyone seeking to create the next late and great ‘social infrastructure’ doesn’t understand that — then that is why they’ll fail like the rest who have failed before them. You start charging people, and they go away.

Friendster — case in point. At the beginning of the ‘social networking’ site craze, Friendster was probably the first, which MySpace adopted their model… Other sites like Tribe were in that list as well. But why did Friendster seemingly fail? It had a remarkable first wave user-base — it had a distinct layout and style, as we’re familiar with being the look and style that MySpace uses now… (Friendster has since dramatically changed its look and included nifty AJAX components for functionality — it’s actually way better!) So what went wrong?

They were talking about charging for the service eventually. Thus, people left as fast as they could. There’s been rumors that have surfaced concerning MySpace charging as well — which if anyone ever notices, that’s when you get the bulletin from ‘Tom’ that it’s all just rumor and should be disregarded.

In the same breath, however — why did GeoCities seemingly fail? Along with the annoying ad-bar that consistently identifies it as a GeoCities free site — Yahoo! failed to improve upon their tools. People gravitate eventually to where ever they feel they’re getting better attention and quality, it’s always been the case in the ether.

Everyone out there right now, that I see attempting to go away from the ad-space model that Google has perfected, will ultimately fail! The ones that won’t, will be Open Source initiatives — though, without truly maximum community support, won’t capture the imaginations of those looking for accessibility and eas-of-installation — ease-of-use. But those projects will linger, or in various surviving forms.

In the end, however — and in the social networking areas. What it all boils down, I think, is this… (And I include all referenes above as well, though as convoluted as this all probably is.):

The majority of end-users want highly functional services, which enhance their networking ability and presence — while not being charged what amounts to an additional ‘tax’ or ‘lien’ for said service. In the end, the reasons why people use the services that they do has everything to do with all of the components that I mention, with some slight compromises in regards to ad-space nuisances. And once a greater demongraphic begins to fold-over into a service’s use in the social space — it becomes a domino effect, because it thus becomes ‘the’ network for those people — including all the functionality they seek as an established and trusted base for which to communicate freely with those within their network.

It’s just human nature. Something that too many companies forego ever thinking about ahead of time.

Anyway, this one may have ran-away on me, but hopefully it makes sense to your readers.