The world of technology is full of surprises where nothing is impossible. Billion dollars’ worth of businesses can be created in a short time span and the brightest of ideas fail to impress the customers.
Samsung’s plan with Facebook surely has to be the biggest blockbuster of 2012 and has surprised most analysts in the technology world. So much that some have even claimed it to be a complete false alarm while others are looking for fire in the smoke. No, Samsung isn’t planning a Facebook app for its wide range of smartphones, tablet and laptops, but planning to take on the social networking giant head one with its own network.
A report which appeared in a paper says that Samsung is secretly working on a social network which will be named as ‘Samsung Facebook’.
Doesn’t sounds like an outlandish dream for a company to take on the largest social network considering the fact that it has limited experience and exposure to the Internet business? Samsung has had immense success with its products and holds a sizable share of the electronics market with its smartphones, cameras and televisions, so why this bizarre move? Yahoo! or an AOL coming out with such a plan would have made sense. But why is Samsung plunging into the Social Networking business where hundreds of social networks having already failed to attract even a fraction of users that Facebook has?
Even Google’s much hyped Google+ failed to make any serious dents into Facebook’s success after users started deserting its erstwhile social network Orkut. MySpace which was Facebook’s biggest rival till a few years back is finding hard to have its ‘space’ in the social networking industry. Apart from micro blogging site-Twitter, none of the social networks seem to be putting up any fight to Facebook. Now Samsung’s move seems to defy business logic. Whatever be the case, the company seems to have big plans with its Social Network which will supposedly have robust features.
It is being said that Samsung’s social network will be launched across all its platforms ranging from televisions to cameras. The electronics giant has set its goal on expanding the social media service across different devices from different companies across different mobile platforms. The plan is to integrate the television, internet, smartphones and cameras into a single platform for the benefit of the users. It sounds more like an app store than a social networking website which has the potential to hurt Facebook’s ever growing fortunes with the network boasting of estimated 900 million+ user base.
The genesis of this move might have been laid with Samsung’s success with its independent messaging service called ChatOn which has become very popular with the users. The chat platform gave Samsung the confidence to get into the world of social networks. But the fact remains same, it is one thing to create a good chatting platform and quite another to take on Facebook. Samsung also plans to integrate the site with Amazon’s cloud computing platform to make it accessible to any device anywhere in the world.
Insiders are saying that the look and feel of the social network will be similar to that of Facebook. But the question remains if Samsung is all set to create an identical twin of Facebook, then why develop it in the first place? The obvious answer would be that the company would want to cash in on Facebook’s success model. Great! But why will the Facebook users desert the site and find themselves on another platform.
The multi-platform theory has failed as most users around the world prefer to be active on a single platform and when something better is available they slowly desert the old one.
The question that arises is – Will this social network work if created?
It will be up against great odds as Facebook has created a cult following like Google’s search engine and it would be a herculean task to get Facebook users to migrate to the new platform. It will need to be out-of-box solution that Samsung would have to think about and an ‘identical twin’ formula is certainly a disaster in making if Samsung is working in it.
