Deep Jive Interests

Ben Parr asks “Why Social Media Revolts Take Place”, and goes through the usual places (crib notes: they do something that seriously cheeses its users, obviously visible in hindsight).  I think the better question is “what would have happened if said sites didn’t cave to their users?”  Hulu, Facebook, Twitter (and, say Digg) all generate controversy when a “revolt” takes place in part because there are enough users to create a fuss.  They’re also so category-defining, and more importantly, contain critical numbers of individuals per network to matter, that I would wager, most people *couldn’t* switch even if they wanted to.  That’s not to say there aren’t alternatives, but a) some of them are not better (in fact most are not) and b) there’s a cost to switching if you’re entire network is on an existing network.