Social Networks have become quite popular on the Web, with services such as MySpace and Facebook commanding billions of investment dollars. Social Networks are the new public spaces, though they’re no longer owned by the government. We’re moving from the town square to the online community. What makes online public spaces different from physical ones is that in the online world what you say will remain there for a long time; the conversations are searchable and can be be copied; and we may never know who has viewed what we have said or written. Each of these facets can be seen in a positive or a negative light, depending upon your perspective.
With the huge rise in popularity of Facebook, we are beginning to see a backlash on the social networking system, that tends to mundane and frivolous aspects of our lives. Facebook and MySpace have been banned for public employees in the US, Canada and Australia, as well as in many schools. While it is true that Facebook conversations seem to be primarily focused on friends and family, business uses are on the upswing. Facebook is becoming a business platform that allows workers to let their friends know who they work for and maybe what they’re selling, so companies can leverage this as a viral marketing tool.
One of the limitations of Facebook is that the data are stored on someone else’s server, and the rules can change without notice. Skype, a free voice over IP service, had a recent outage for several days, leaving millions of users without communications. Depending on these free services for business may not be a wise decision and at this time it may be best to use web-based services in addition to other communication and networking tools. Another option would be to build your own service.
In contrast to the casual and chatty tone of Facebook, some niche business social networks are starting to mark out their own, but smaller, territory online. These include Sermo for physicians; E-Factor for European entrepreneurs and Emerald InTouch which supports collaboration for researchers subscribing to Emerald’s professional journals.
The Emerald service is built upon Elgg, an open source platform developed and serviced by Curverider of the UK. Emerald has taken the free software construction code of Elgg and created a niche network focused on research, extending Emerald’s basic offering of online journals.
Given the backlash against social networks once they reach a certain level of success, businesses may opt for smaller, controlled gateways to further online social networking. Since networking has always been an important aspect of business, it’s doubtful that these tools will be ignored by the majority of businesses. The trick will be to remain as open as possible to attract members, allow users to control who and what they connect with and offer a valid business reason to remain a member and invite others.
The competition to become the prime community for your niche market may be heating up and we may see another Internet real estate gold rush, as in the first Dot Com era.
I think that your “forecast” is correct .. and if I wanted to hedge my bets, then I’d say that I think your musings are on the right path ;-)
Have you reviewed http://www.zooped.com Music and Business social networking ?
Hmmm, thanks Harold, for that thoughtful post, which I found very useful. I feel there is a powerful overlap between collaboration, development and these emerging social networking platforms. So much so that I have built a collaborative leadership development platform http://www.TheLeadershipHub.com . My guess is that if the ‘triviality’ of a lot of the interaction on Facebook et all is replaced with informal collaborative learning – as with Sermo for physicians, where a physician with a puzzling case can call on the brains and experience of 25,000 other members and ask their advice – then that’s the way that these Web 2.0 sites will reach into the business and professional community. It will be as collaboration rather than just networking platforms that most value is added. There’s a lot of disillusionment with MBAs, leadership training and courses, yet tremendous demand for improved leadership. 70% of our learning in life is informal. Hence the power of collaborative communities.