You know an idea is successful when large corporations get into the mix. Also, spin-offs of a great idea also tell me when the idea has arrived. In this case, we have social networks.
A history lesson is seeing Facebook geared toward educational communities, Friendster for dating (sort of), and MySpace to fill in the holes and allow companies to cover as individuals. LinkedIn has been highly successful because of their niche in professional development.
Welcome Disney to the mix. Xtreme Digital is geared toward pre-teens, pushing Disney content to those of interest. It’s early to tell if this will be a successful portal for Disney, or more importantly for the kids.
From Australia, FatSecret has been launched to help those trying to lose weight. It includes communities by diet or region, polling information, and friend networks.
Are these going the way of portals from 5-6 years ago? Not in my opinion. The failure of portals in their height of popularity was the need to be the next Yahoo. The difference for Disney and FatSecret is their focus. Disney, although overly commercial, stays in their sweet spot. FatSecret isn’t for everyone. One of Facebook’s failures, to me, is when they opened up the community to everyone. Although the number of users have grown immensely, I think they’ve lost a little of the close niche that they used to enjoy. Now, the only difference between Facebook and MySpace are policies and an innocent beginning.
Social networks are dependent on social policies. My personal friend network is by commonalities. I have friends who love hockey, I have friends in higher education, and I have friends that are technologically gifted. When they intersect, that is wonderful, but I would never mix groups.
Social networking is here to stay because of one word…focus. Find your communications vehicles that intersect with interests and you can use social networks to your advantage.
3 Comments to “Social Networks Growing Up”
May 3, 2007
In most areas of the world and the web, specialization and customization make things so much more appealing to the audience. What both Disney and FatSecret seam to get is what you correctly categorized as focus, sticking to one interest group and covering their interests so very well so as to greatly increase their appeal. Sort of like the bestbuy/circuitcity/homedepot/staples etc on the web.
May 9, 2007
exactly, Pirus. That’s the beauty and nature of the Web, but we are just now taking advantage of it.
There’s a similarity to radio or cable television, where your audience is automatically segmented. But only the Web can take it one step further to engage YOU in actions and communication. And that is why I wake up in the morning.
May 22, 2007
I disagree. Completely.
“Social networking” is probably a fad that will go the way of “CB simulator.”
What’s important in that statement is that CD sim gave way to chat which gave way to IM which finally brought us the wonderful banality of Twitter. (When did they get the “e”?)
Social networking should be tracked back to The Well, usenet, forums, message boards and the like. And when we’re all laughing at the silly years of the early 2000’s, we’ll still be building communities online.
Social networking works because it is nothing more than building communities. This time around, rather than Microsoft trying to reinvent the wheel with Sidewalk, the read/write Web shifts the power — and *responsibility* — for building communities to, the readers (or pro-sumers as some call us).
Niche sites like naturallycurly.com and fatsecret make the read/write Web easier for marketers to understand. But they have nothing to do with community building until the wizards come out from behind the curtain and give the keys to the readers. There were niche portals in 1998. Those died too.
The only thing that will be left standing when Bubble 2.0 pops is you and me, and him. And her. And her. And him. An that guy over there. And the one next to him. It will be us. And we’ll be just as hungry for company and connections as we are now. And we’ll be just as ego centric and vain as we are now.
Advertisers *might* make money off sites that are focused. But I disagree with your premise. “Social networking” works because we want community.
Othewise. Nice blog.
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