I’m wondering for what reasons SocialMedia apps always specialize one just on media? Flickr for picture, youtube for vids, del.icio.us for bookmarks? No system to get it all in one? Why?
Is it due gain higher usability? To create a hotspot?
My opinion:
This specialization has different reasons. One reasons is that systems supporting multiple media, need a clear structure with a high usability. Otherwise, the user would be overwhelmed by to many functions and will get lost what lowers his interest on the service. This is not easy to gain.
Another reason for specializing on just one media is to create a hotspot provider in this field of topic to attract and join people of same interest and build up a huge community. For example, Photographers meet at the online photo gallery flickr or music lovers at the music platform last.fm.
At least, searching media in specialized systems can be performed more precised and specific what leads to
more reliable results, imagine searching for music by artist, or pictures by color.
What do you say?
In my opinion it is not as easy as it could be to build up a social network, so many provider try to concentrate on one topic and do their best on it. furthermore the user only wants to cope with people with common interests, otherwise it is to much information.
someday when every service provides access to ist data via API the aggregators will bring it all together. in the very far future maybe there will be the semantic web. it provides some possibilties to mix up all the stuff in the right connected way.