facebooks logical killer will grow up inside facebook

I wanted to get this down for posterity, I've been saying this for months, but dont have an early record of it and as I watch it happen exactly as I predicted it, I should get it down, I think.

Branchout today is a "linkedin" killer that is growing up inside facebook.  Instagram grew up inside facebook and  was perceived as such a threat by facebook that they bought it for 1Billion.

The new market is this mysterious mountain thats always been there, I call it the "human interaction mountain" that up to recently has been something a lot of people saw value in, but only a few managed to begin to wrap their heads around it.

Google and Wikipedia were early adaptors, building the roads and trails to it, and documenting how it got their, and describing it, and they've built their fortunes on that defining process.

Facebook went in and cut off all the trees, and managed to "harvest" all the wood products and that has led to a trillion dollar IPO possibly.

Apple has built the cars and infrastructure to navigate it.  Instagram and Hipstamatic and Twitter obviously found value in areas where facebook wasnt, but its still as I'd consider on the surface of this giant mountain of data.  This is because all of these services allow for sharing and consuming of what is essentially 1 way non interactive content.

I would lump gaming in here too, because while it is interactive, the relationship between the user and the content simply loops, and ultimately the user is going through a series of pre-programmed motions and the game scope is not effected by individual users.

Branchout and Linkedin have begun to scratch that surface and go a little deeper, and content through programs like that, which enable new content to literally form out of relationships between the users.  Facebook has some of this concept in "pages" and "groups" but it is all still very generic, beginning stages.

I think the real deep market that exists and represents a much lower hype, longer lifespan market that will be resistant to commoditization is this deeper "mining" of the mountain.

This means more sophisticated product offerings, more complex models that literally discover and mine various kinds of data models that are for now largely unknown, but thanks to the Googles, the Facebooks, the Apples, these new models are more discoverable than ever.

on a somewhat related note:

If this interests you, there is more down this rabbit hole.  The "giant data mountain" that is essentially made of human interaction and information itself, is not only abstract, but quickly merging with the physical world, which is one reason why its particularly important.  Right now, using any 3d printing system, we can convert pure data into physical objects. These can be artistic expressions, physical tools or parts of tools, and even human organs (kidneys, bladders and other organs have already been successfully implanted for years)

The "word became flesh" is more true than ever.  This kind of merging of physical and data is where we are headed, and these interactions will more and more rapidly be indistinguishable from our physical world as "we" become the data we create and interact with.

This is why, to me, the understanding of the relationship of content and human interaction is crucial and a massive investment/market opportunity.  Soon it will "be" the market, literally.  The most valuable product will not be a physical commodity, it will be ideas, connections, algorithms, virtual systems.  We're literally witnessing the dawning of an entirely new reality, and the market leading visionaries are capitalizing on it now so they can be positioned to be the custodians of this new reality as it continues to evolve.