Research, Thunking•
on March 10th, 2010•
There’s two clear trends we’re seeing with regard to Social Networks (i.e. Facebook, Bebo, Ning etc.) in our research;
1) Specialization: There’s a growing number of specialized Social Networks for people’s hobbies, cultures or activities. Such as sailing, Indians, African Americans and more, we call these SSN’s (Specialized Social Networks). Then there’s services like Ning that enable social groups to connect and organize.
2) Consolidation: People are getting over the mad rush and excitement of new stuff and staying put, including consolidating where they are and what services they are using. If they’re on Facebook, they’re staying.
In terms of global Social Networking services, Facebook has won, as LinkedIn won for business networking. MySpace, Bebo, NetLog and others can try all they want, but pulling in people from existing services is going to be a tough job. Why?
It’s Not Contacts It’s Relationships & History
Sure, Buzz already enabled your Gmail contacts to easily migrate into Buzz (a problem with privacy in and of itself) and Facebook and the others offer the same service. But it’s not about your contacts. It’s about your content history (the photo’s and videos you’ve shared, commented on, laughed and cried over, the notes you’ve made and shared and more.) This is the real value inherent in a Social Networking service.
While it may be easy to import contacts, it’s much harder to convince all your friends and connections to move to a new service. Because they too have a history on that service. And they don’t just connect with you. They too have their own family and friends they’ve established relationships with.
For new services that want to compete directly with Facebook, this is their biggest challenge. And relationships and that history are not transferable. It’s just not technically possible.
Specialized Networks Have Opportunity
This doesn’t mean there isn’t still opportunity. We see a trend toward specialized Social Networking services, such as AllSailors or ConnectedSailors or singles dating for sailors like LoveSail in the UK. Then there’s Ning where you can set up your own Social Network for whatever hobby, sports group, community group you want. Easily and quickly. These specialized Social Network services are growing and what we’re seeing is that people are keeping their Facebook, NetLog etc., services and then engaging with specialty Social Network related to their hobby. We have seen as well, that people who are passionate about a particular topic, cease engagement with general services like Facebook; this will represent a monetization challenge to these services.
Age Related Context
Tied into this is that the under 20 demographic is most active in broad social networks, it’s the 20+ crowd who are establishing hobbies and extra interests that are migrating more to Specialized Social Networks (SSN’s), especially the 35+ demographic, men and women alike.
(Author: G. Crouch)
Best Practices, Research•
on January 28th, 2010•
A trend we’re noticing in Social Networking services (i.e. Facebook or Bebo) and how people are behaving is a move to more specifically focused social networks. Perhaps the first to start this was Ning a few years ago, and Ning has steadily increased. We’ve seen the addition of services like Ning, such as Qlubb, Flux, Grouply and well, here’s a list.
When you compare this to real-world social behaviour, it’s not at all surprising. We all have our hobbies and activities; sports, travel, photography, community service. A number of social technology companies have seen this, it’s nothing new from an availability standpoint.
What is new as a trend we’re seeing is that these services are expanding. It’s changing how broad social networks like Facebook, are being used. We call social networking services like Facebook “Open Loop Social Networks” – meaning they are more open. You can form groups in Facebook, with group and fan pages. There are millions of them, from the sublime to the ridiculous to the activist.
In our analysis of these communities and social group behaviours online though, we’ve seen a 42% increase in use of “Closed Loop Social Networks” over the past 6 months from a sample size of 54,000 profiles. Facebook will always see such group and fan pages being built; but we note that 96% of Facebook groups that are formed are active for only 3 weeks on average. Highly active group pages in places like Facebook tend to be those that are more focused; such as kayakers or mountain bikers.
Specialty group social networking service like Grouply or Ning however, are much more active since the participants are all like-minded. For those looking to market to those groups, look beyond just Facebook and look at other Closed Loop Networks to truly reach your target.
Media Analysis•
on September 23rd, 2008•
Recently, Facebook changed it’s UI design. So did Twitter and FriendFeed. These are 3 of the top Social Media tools. All have developed an ecosystem around them, and none more so than Facebook. This shows a serious fragility in the Social Media Ecosystem – that one popular platform can have profound economic impact on the many businesses building off the primary in that ecosystem.
Just like auto makers that have begun to shut down and re-tool plants from trucks to smaller cars, there is a profound residual impact on suppliers to those big auto makers. A good article in All Facebook (an unofficial blog about all things Facebook) shows the surface of the impact of a UI design change in a popular Social Network. Apparently there are mixed reviews where some application developers and advertising engines have seen an increase in traffic/impressions while others have seen significant decreases.
Regardless of the nuances of the changes and traffic impacts, what is clear is that the Social Media economics remain fragile and reflective of any emergent industry. A similar set of occurences happened when Google first started changing its search algorithms and Page Rank rules.
While we have little doubt that Social Media and the Social Web will continue to see significant growth, a key challenge ahead will be how the economics will work. Just like the real-world, a major “manufacturer” can have a profound impact on the attendant companies building services and products off the back-end.
Unlike the real-world however, changes in Social Media services can be extensive and destroy business models overnight, while creating whole new ones. This creates some serious concerns over business model sustainability when it comes to adjunct services and products relying on a key player. The overall impact is still less than when an auto maker closes a factory putting thousands out of work, but there is still an economic impact.
Those providing consulting and advice on leveraging Social Media services will have a challenge to constantly understand and adapt to the quickly evolving economics of the Social Media ecosystem. Stability is unlikely to occur in the short term and we anticipate increased volatility as some services collapse in the coming months with monetization pressures. This issue also shows the power of a popular Web service. With Facebook making such arbitrary changes with little warning and forced compliance like Google, how these issues can be better managed will also be interesting. But that’s another blog entry.