The Buzz Report: Five reasons social networking doesn’t work – CNET.com:
By Molly Wood, section editor, CNET.com
Thursday, June 2, 2005
The word on the street lately is that social networking is in trouble…” etc…etc..
Then she goes on saying how Friendster is in trouble, which is probably true, but I beg to differ as to her general conclusion. The more focused, targeted sites do and will work.
LinkedIn has a business focus, the invitation-only approach actually enhances the value of the network for business use. I received several calls from headhunters who found me there, and who all claim they no longer go to Monster and the likes, they use LinkedIn as the primary source to find candidates. LinkedIn is clearly for the business crowd, and I think it makes sense to keep your business and social life separate…not doing so is what hurt Ryze, the early player in this game.
As for “finding the money” they started to charge for job postings, and plan several other premimum services. I am not worried about LinkedIn’s survival as the primary business networking site. Hm … what did I just say? Perhaps that’s a differentiator, i.e. “business networking”vs. “social networking” (?)
Then again, there is the phenomenal success of Thefacebookwith a completely different business model: they are a classic media company, reveneue comes solely from advertising, all functions are free. Why are they successful? Very focused on a segment of the population (college students), and they basically map communities that already exist in individual campuses.
Bottom line: the CNET article is probably right, generalist sites without a particular focus will die; after the initial spike in signups users realize there’s not much to do there – but focused, targeted sites that offer added value are here to stay.
Technorati Tags: Social Networking, Business Networking, Social+Software, LinkedIn, Ryze, TheFaceBook
I think blogs and forums are taking over the space of social networking sites. With blogs everyone gets to be their own admin, which means setting the rules, format, and feel of their blog.
There are sites like Technorati that list posts by category, but finding good blogs and articles still takes quite a bit of work. It’s not nearly as easy as looking through some pictures and clicking add as friend.
Adding good comments on a blog requires finding it and reading it. So the contacts from blogs are more valuable than from social networking sites because of the effort required to form them.
“With blogs everyone gets to be their own admin, which means setting the rules, format, and feel of their blog. “ – I agree. But that does not mean taking over from social networking sites … they serve two different purposes, IMHO.
I am using my blog to express my ideas on certain things that are of interest to me. People interested in the same subjects might interact with me, so if over time it develops into a mini “virtual community”, it’s all organized around those discussions and shared interest. It’s the idea exchange that matters, we may not actually know each other at all.
LinkedIn, on the other hand is all about business networking for me, it’s an online map of relationhsips I already have in “real life”, direct, or indirect through friends. I am using it in a fairly conservative fashion, and I know that is the way the Founders meant it to be. I know there are “linkmongers” “linkhunters” out there building up thousands of contact records, but that to me is pointless, in fact undermines the usefullness of the system as it is meant to be.
In summary, blogging is all about what we say, LinkedIn.. et al is all about who we know.
Thanks for commenting, and I invite anyone with ideas on the subject to interact.
Zoli
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