SocialLife to No Social Life

I think we need to have some kind of legislation around the content aggregators; especially the ones for mobile phones. The application "SocialLife" launched by Verizon yesterday aggregates 10 social networks (link of Mobilecrunch). There needs to be some market research done around such applications before they are launched or be atleast run through an "unbiased" focus group.

Firstly, how many different social networks can a single user be on? Secondly, has anyone done some analysis on the levels of battery consumption on these devices with such applications - GPRS/wireless usage on mobiles consume oodles of energy? Thirdly, many social networks are coming up/have already come up with their own mobile application; which means that the aggregators are trying to cash in during the extreme short term.

We have RSS readers, Yahoo Go, MSN mobile, Plusmo, Widsets, Newsgator - the list is extremely long. There are companies like MSN and Yahoo, who will survive the 'aggregator bust' because it is an extrememly small portion of their business and we have seen big businesses in the past cashing in on short term fads like this. Because they know they don't have much to lose and they can also soothe their loyal users by staying current with the fad. But the smaller companies need to rethink.

Aggregation is an easy way out : strike deals with content/service providers and then build the application to consolidate/interface with all providers. It's much easier than thinking of a business model on the internet and sustaining it. Internet is a place where you can launch any business idea and that's the story behind many rags to riches episodes here. But copying an idea and sharing a piece of the already mutilated pie will not take companies anywhere.