What if the Social Bubble Burst?

What if Facebook decided to shut down and close shop on all of it’s 400+ million users? What if Twitter could no longer serve up it’s 50+ million tweets a day? What if YouTube’s servers were shut down and could no longer host over 120+ million videos? What if the social media marketing machine finally stopped because the social media well ran dry?

Good-Bye Free Social Web

Ning, the social platform that lets anyone create their own social network, announced that it was shutting down it’s free operations to focus 100% on paid accounts. That’s thousands and thousands of social networks, videos, forums, conversations, photos, and blogs that will be shut down. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy business decision to make, but a business decision none-the-less.

Note: If you have a free account with Ning and want to back-up your network give SaveMyNing.com a try. They even have a few suggestions as to where you can migrate your network to.

Hello New Web

What if this current social media bubble we’re in burst much like the “dot-com bubble” of the early 90′s? Many would argue that we’re not in a “bubble” because of the stability of dot-coms like Amazon, Ebay, iTunes, Facebook, etc. But, like everything in life, no one thing lasts forever.

I find it interesting that major corporations are finally jumping aboard the social media marketing band wagon after seeing it’s small business counter-part’s success. Marketing online has never been as open, easy, and more valuable than it is now [mainly since people want to share, engage, and are less concerned about privacy online].

But, what if the unthinkable happened and this entire social media “thing” died and millions of people migrated to a different online ecosystem. Hypothetically, what if the system was more akin to China’s where the government controls what its citizens interact with online? No Facebook, no Twitter, no blogs to keep us all connected and engaged online. As a small business owner, what would you do?

Scary thought?

Sure.

So, What Would You Do?

I’ve got some ideas as to what I would do, but I want to open this discussion up first before we explore it more in a later post. Imagine, if you will, starting a business in this new closed internet economy – how would you market your products or services? How would you reach the masses? Remember, you don’t have access to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin. YouTube is shut down and so are many of the social platforms/tools that you would of had access to prior.

The ball is in your court. Let’s explore some ideas in the comments section below and share this with as many people as you can so we can get some great feedback. I’ll compile as many suggestions as possible and use them for a follow-up post.

Disclaimer: We will never share your email address with anyone, period.