At first I thought, “Big deal, startups have been making their own AOL Instant Messenger clients like this for years and I haven’t seen anything REVOLUTIONARY come out of those”
But then I slapped myself in the face and said, “WAKE UP, MATT! The personal relationship that we have with our Facebooks and Twitters is on a whole different level than AIM. Not only that, but the amount of information, friends, and OPPORTUNITIES to integrate these systems is unparalleled to anything we’ve seen before”
What’s the first thing that came to my mind? Video.
Would you download a free desktop utility that allowed you to have streaming video with any of your Facebook friends? YES and so would 100 million other people.
And then I thought of the KILLER app: Facebook meets Skype (meets iPhone?). Oh Lord. The possibilities.
I’m a bit scared for these companies revenue streams, to be honest. Everyone is used to getting stuff for free, and unless their programs are SUPER DUPER AMAZING, I think they’ll have a hard time charging more than perhaps 99 cents per user since Facebook.com and Twitter.com are both free. Remember the uproar when a facebook rumor was released that they would be charging users 99 cents per month?
On the diabetes side, this poses great opportunities for future integration, as well. Any technology that combines something that is already familiar to you (facebook twitter) with something else that is familiar to you (diabetes) is a recipe for success. Don’t worry, MYLEstone Health is already on the case 