There Goes the Neighborhood

It seems like only hours ago that I was commenting on why size should not be the primary factor for evaluating a "successful" SNS, when someone sends me a link to this Wall Street Journal article. Apparently, ICQ is now entering the fray:

America Online Inc.'s ICQ plans to launch a social-networking service Thursday, joining two other big online companies tiptoeing into the space over the last week, InterActiveCorp and Lycos Inc. Others say they are watching the area, which is known for start-ups like Friendster Inc. and Tickle Inc.

ICQ ("I Seek You") sees its offering as mapping out its community of tens of million of registered users, many of whom are outside the U.S. The service hopes its ability to integrate instant messaging into social networking, its experience running a community and its large number of users will help the new service, called ICQ Universe, become a leader among social networking sites. Parent America Online is a unit of Time Warner Inc., of New York.

"When I look at other networking sites that are out there, in almost every way we have an advantage," said Orey Gilliam, general manager of ICQ. "I think it's a natural evolution for our service."

[...]

ICQ sees its ICQ Universe having a much bigger audience -- as well as creating larger opportunities for people to meet others -- than existing sites. Those able to participate go beyond the more than 175 million registered and eight million daily active users ICQ claims. AOL's AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ have been interoperable since this summer, so ICQ users can also invite AIM users to join. ICQ said AIM users will also eventually be able to log in with their screen names.

At ICQ Universe, which has been in beta for three weeks, users can create profiles of themselves, write testimonials for their friends, view and message members as well see their relationships to others on the site.

Source: Wall Street Journal, "America Online's ICQ Plans Social-Networking Service"

So the math goes something like: I've already got millions and millions of users signed up, I'll throw on some more profile data, a little network visualization, and I'll have the best SNS known to humankind. Why does it make sense to some people that being put in a room with 150 million people is somehow a useful thing? ICQ has had for years a service that allowed you to connect to new people (I disabled mine from Day 1).

This reminds me of the Love.com project that was bootstrapped onto AIM some months back. I still haven't heard anything about the relative success or failure of that venture yet, but I'm sure that it will be successful if not by shear brute force.

The only thing still true, though, is that no one really knows what's going to happen.