Can Social Media Startup Unthink Unseat FCan anti-Facebook marketing help new social networking site, Unthink, siphon off Facebook customers?

The social media market may seem pretty saturated, especially with the entrance of Google Plus into the already crowded field. Facebook, of course, is the king of the social media mountain, and there’s always a scrappy new contender itching to topple the king.

Unthink is betting its future on anti-Facebook sentiment. In fact, the new social media start-up is not only basing its entire marketing strategy on how very much it is not Facebook, but the very inspiration for the site was based on the idea that Facebook was mistreating its customers.

According to Sarah Perez, Unthink CEO Natasha Dedis got the idea for Unthink “when her son wanted to sign up for Facebook and she read the terms of service. They were not something she wanted to agree to because they could change at any time. But for her son, that decision was met with a lot of anxiety.”

So like any loving mother she started a social networking site that didn’t have such pernicious terms: Unthink, which gives people more ownership over their personal data and privacy, something that many Facebook users have been upset with. Unfortunately for consumers and Unthink alike, many other Facebook customers either don’t understand or don’t care about privacy issues.

Unthink is marketing their social experience as the anti-Facebook option (see video below). It has all energy of the Occupy Wall Street protests, replete with a manifesto heavy on the language of emancipation.

Part of this, of course, is simply Unthink tapping into the very same energy that made Facebook what it is in the first place: the cool factor. Facebook used to be exclusive. It was cool to be a part of it when it was only at Harvard, or only at a select group of schools, or only for college kids.

Now it’s for everybody and the cool factor has been replaced by the convenience factor. Since everyone you know is already on Facebook, it makes migrating to something like Google Plus or Unthink, well, a little unthinkable (bet you didn’t see that one coming.)

So the question is simply this: can the cool factor kill the convenience factor? Can the impulse to be part of something new and sort of exciting really incentivize enough people to abandon Facebook and migrate to Unthink?

I doubt it. It’s impossible to overstate just how important the convenience factor is here. For all-purpose social networking, Facebook has everything most users want and need, including family and friends already signed up who might be reluctant to move.

The future of social media is in niche networks. Maybe Unthink can tap into a specific demographic, but they won’t be anything more than a fly buzzing about the head of Mark Zuckerberg’s Goliath.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Facebook’s privacy settings are horrible, and the bigger it gets the less it cares about its customer base. Kudos to Unthink for taking a unique approach to marketing an alternative, however dubious I am of their success.