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More on categorisation of the social networks

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 24, 2007 in social networks. 0 Comments

As I have identified earlier there are two types of social networks:

  • hard-linked networks, where users consciously select and build their network by hand-picking their friends.
  • soft-linked networks, where users become part of a group depending on their activities.

Building the catalog and going through many different sites, I decided to add another dimension in identifying the networks. This time identification will be by type of activities:

  • general purpose

General purpose networks, such as Facebook, MySpace

  • professional

Networks targeted to professionals, LinkedIn, Viadeo

  • targeted

Networks that are built for very targeted niche, such as Flixter or ParentsConnect

Enterprise social networking solutions

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 24, 2007 in social networks. 1 Comment

I have to admit I wasn’t aware of any serious enterprise social networking solutions before I came across Lotus Connections product from IBM. It has rich feature set including: profiles, communities, blogs, dogear (bookmark sharing) and activities.

Lotus Connections isn’t a recently developed product, it is a combination of various internal tools and utilities that IBM were using for quite some time already. What IBM did, is they packaged all those nice little “HR type” products in to a commercial package and made it available for sale. Apparently the system is used at IBM internally and proves to be very efficient.

I’d also recommend watching this introduction video:

Do we need a metanetwork?

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 23, 2007 in social networks. 0 Comments

Problem statement: We have lots and lots of social networks out there, with more coming each day. Some of them we can ignore right from the beginning, as they are completely out of our interest circle, but how do we go about those that are of some interest to us? It’s really putting of when you have to fill in same information over and over again. But that’s OK, what is really annoying, is the fact that you have to build your own network around you from scratch.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a single point to control all social networking activities? A place where you could enter you details and preferences just once? A place where you keep your relation data, so that when you go and join another network all your existing friends re-connect to you immediately and you don’t have to start with an empty buddy list?

Solution: Market is recognising the demand and responding accordingly. There are at least two streams - full blown implementations and emerging standarts. Both are trying to address the same issue - lack of centralised control (or view) in decentralised system of social networks.

This is all very well and good. Only issue that I see, is that users might want to differentiate their social network on each site. For example you may not want your LinkedIn contacts to see pictures of yourself you are posting on MySpace. The problem here is that account on these “aggregators” might become a beast to manage with all sorts of different options and settings for each network you control from there. So, will the easiness and convenience of managing all accounts from one place outweigh the complexity of personalisation settings? We shall see…

The meaning of it all…

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 23, 2007 in social networks. 0 Comments

One of the reasons I’m in all this social networking stuff is that I find it hard to understand and grasp the meaning of it. OK, I do understand practicality of it, like finding contacts, jobs, etc. What I am failing on is to completely understand the remaining bit of it. Self exposure, communications, chats and so on, that still OK, I get it… What I was really not getting is the “my current status” type communication.

Just recently I found a very interesting article, that pretty much explains the mechanics behind. It all starts to fit together, so for those of you who, as I did, fail to grasp the meaning of “exhaust data”, have a read.

What your network is worth?

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 22, 2007 in links and news. 0 Comments

Very funny application. Lets you calculate your social network value. In fact it’s just a game, but concept is very interesting.

If only it gathered data from social networks and online search engines… Something similar to this service (or rather calculator) for blogs.

By the way, my network value is rather low comparing to “similar profiles”, yet it is valued £76′000. Any suggestions how to monetise at least a bit of it?? :)

What is a social network?

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 19, 2007 in social networks. 1 Comment

We started compiling a directory (or catalogue as we call it here). To begin with, we’ve revisited a rather comprehensive list on Wikipedia. And we found something that confused us. Among “normal” social network sites, blogs, forums and collaboration sites were listed as well. Here’s when we started discussing, what exactly is the social network? Or what makes a network (or a website) the social network?

Let’s look around for help and some definitions.

Google suggests (I picked one of the suggested items) that social network is:

The personal or professional set of relationships between individuals.

Wikipedia’s view is:

A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes.

If you do more research, you’ll find different definitions (in terms of wording) for a social network, but generally it boils down to “group or related individuals”. Now, all above mentioned types of web sites fall under that definition. Whether it’s a collaboration site (such as wikipedia), or forum, or even Open Source Development site (such as SourceForge), or even a news site with their registered users, they all are social networks for they unite individuals in one or the other way. If you do more generalisation, the Internet is one big social network, because it unites all Internet users. That’s useful…

So, when it comes to sorting and identifying social networks, I believe we can distinguish two types: hard-linked and soft-linked networks.

Hard-linked networks are social networks where users pick their peers themselves. Theme of the network isn’t that much important. This type of network focuses on “friendship” and links between users. Examples of these networks are FaceBook, LinkedIn and MySpace. Linking is explicit, as links are picked by users themselves.

Soft-linked networks are social networks where users are “grouped” by some set of attributes, such as music they like, web sites they visit, software they develop or even company they work for. Linking in these networks does not play important role and in most cases is non-existent, because people already belong to a group. Exmpales of these networks could be any forum, news sites (Slashdot) or social bookmark sites (Delicious). Linking is implicit, as all group members are related by their attributes.

Surely, there are many gaps and holes in this definition, but for now, we’ll use this as a working theory for our catalogue.

Under pressure

Published by Alexey Gabsatarov on November 13, 2007 in social networks. 4 Comments

Social networks represent a way to simulate real interactions between people. Those interactions have always been and always will be there. Why social networks created so much hype around them lately?

Human is a social animal. Our very identities are shaped and defined by society we live in. We accept common wisdom of “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are”.

Well, this is it. Social networks is a modus operandi to show our identities in a different way. Very powerful and reveling way I must add. The same way performing requires spectators, social networking requires exposing. This creates even more powerful phenomena of exposing social interactions by means of social interactions.

Peer pressure, huh? What about Facebook pressure? :)

Good night!

News of the social networks

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 13, 2007 in links and news. 0 Comments

Some interesting links and news from social networking arena.

DanceJam is YouTube for Dance. People would post video clips where they dance and then can compete with other dances. Check out this interview for more details. Their web site is still closed, but stay tuned if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

UpDown proves once again that social networking is not only for fun. Project is built upon an idea that community of like minded people can perform better analysis and come up with better investing strategies. UpDown offers many different services, such as investing competitions and allows creating your personal investing profiles. So far this service is receiving very positive feedback.

BeliefNet is a social network dedicated to religious devotees, spiritual leaders, and faith-based group. This once again proves that social networks are no longer dating and band fan gathering places.

Befaft is a very interesting or rather unusual network. This social network is dedicated to plastic surgery patients. Users can ask for advise whether they need plastic surgery in the first place. The site also offers tools to simulate effects of the plastic surgery. Ex-patients can post their pre and post surgery pictures.

PetSugar is yet another social network, but not really for us, humans… It’s a social network for girlie dogs! Polls, votings, comments, suggestions, pet food selections, even pet celebrities. All you (sorry, your dog) can find on PetSugar.

Enemybook plays rather negative note. List your enemies, unite with enemies of your enemies. Tell others why your enemies are in the list. It’s not a social network site, it is a Facebook application however. There are more networks that represent the opposite side of social networks. Coming back to security in the social networks one should always keep in mind that socialising online can sometimes cause a lot of grief.

Social Networks United

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 12, 2007 in news. 0 Comments

Possibly, assuming Facebook accepts this invitation, OpenSocial will unite most of the major players in social networking arena. From the moment Google introduced their OpenSocial platform, where developers can write applications for all participating networks (MySpace is one of them), Facebook was somehow reluctant to join.

Although Facebook is seen as a major competitor for MySpace, there is an opinion that in fact they can co-exist and they are not as similar as they might appear at the first glance.

Being able to develop applications for social networks without worrying about transportability and making them available across the board is a great thing and hopefully Facebook will join Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING on the OpenSocial platform.

Social networks: spicing up with e-commerce

Published by Rytis Sileika on November 12, 2007 in social networks. 0 Comments

SpiceLarge enterprises start to recognise the power and importance of social networks. Long ago are the days when people paid just an occasional visit to these sites. They become an important part of our everyday lives. People chat, discuss, exchange opinions and recommendations on various subjects. According to a report released recently, social network web sites are more visited than webmail sites.

Apple, Cisco, Nokia and other large enterprises recognise this trend and respond accordingly. Support for social network sites such as YouTube is being extended into mobile devices. Collaboration is even considered to become part of Microsoft Exchange solution.

Even companies that are not directly related to IT business should not ignore the power of social networking. Word of mouth becomes more important when selecting a new product or applying for service. People become more immune to ads and hits and more often chose a product that doesn’t have a surrounding hype, but is recommended by a circle of close friends.

It is also important not to underestimate size of the audience in social networks. Combined size of most popular social networks is over 820 million users. MySpace alone accounts for well over 100 million of them. That is really impressive, so before planning new ad campaign companies should think carefully about the primary targets for it.

Unfortunately this isn’t as easy as paying for TV ads. The situation is much more complicated.

First of all the market is very young and there’s lots to be discovered yet. Old marketing rules apply only partially or do not apply at all. One should also consider the audience of these networks. At the moment the cut-off point is at approximately 35-40 years, meaning that majority of the users are younger than 40.

Is it worth it? Absolutely. Not only it opens new user base, but the sooner you start, the better you will be prepared for the future. And as it looks now, the future is in social networks.