Introduction to social networking
by Tom on March 5, 2008
in Social Networking
We have all heard of Facebook and MySpace. These are the two big social networks. They are constantly in the news and from valuations and purchases being made we all know they are big business. Social networking covers a lot more than just Facebook and MySpace though. There are many networks targeting more specific audiences, sometimes by geographical locations and other times by an interest or hobby.
A social network can be defined as a website in which users make connections and share with other users. Users can typically fill out a profile for themselves, upload blogs, photos, video and music and share this with their contacts.
A Powerful tool
Social networking hit the big time in terms of mainstream media coverage when users where able to transfer their social networking success into real world success. The most famous example of this is music artists creating massive fan bases before being signed to a record label with the typical examples being Lily Allen and the Arctic Monkeys. There are countless examples from the music world but also from budding film directors and authors.
15 Largest Social networking sites
Rank Name (Users, Niche)
- MySpace (110m, General)
- Facebook (97.8m, General)
- Habbo (86m, General)
- Hi5 (70m, General)
- Orkut (67m, General)
- Friendster (58m, General)
- Classmates.com (40m, School/college/work/military)
- Windows Live Spaces (40m, blogging)
- Xanga (40m, blogs and metro areas)
- Flixster (36m, Movies)
- Netlog (32m, General)
- Tagged.com (30m, General)
- Reunion.com (28m, Locating friends and family)
- iLike (25m, Music, videos, photos, blogs)
- Bebo (21.3m, General)
There are some surprises in the top 15. Habbo I have never heard of. Orkut I learnt about last week thanks to a comment made. The fact LinkedIn didnt make it into the top 15 (only 19m users) is also interesting. This data was sourced from Wikipedia where you can find a full list of almost all social networks and details about them.
Issues being faced
Last week I reported about Facebook’s first drop in unique monthly visitors. As we can see from the table above, Facebook is the second largest social networking website. These websites see massive numbers of users which is the key to their sky high valuations. The problem so far has been in monetizing these websites. Users do not react well to advertising and click through rates tend to be poor. Increased anxiety and media attention to the aspect of privacy and data protection is another big issue that needs to be addressed.
The future of social networking
This is a concept that is here to stay. The public has proven itself to be big fans of social networking sites. I see two things happening in the future. The first is the consolidation of the big general networks. We cannot maintain a profile on every site without a tool allowing us to centrally manage all our profiles and the related messages.
The second movement I can see happening is an increase in niche social networking. This is already happening to a certain extent but is likely to become a whole lot bigger. Sites targeting business users are still relatively small and unproven as a genuine tool for networking. As the younger generations which have been brought up on a web 2.0 diet full of social networking progress and join the workforce in ever increasing numbers we are likely to see a huge growth in this area.
Your thoughts
Which networks do you belong to? What trends can you see emerging? Anything surprise you regarding the top 15 social networking websites?
Facebook has been pretty aggressive on their advertising lately. Whenever I log in I am always asked if I want to meet single Christian women in my area. In the past I remember the ads were much different and not targeted.
I have noticed those adverts too. I dont get the Christian bit, but I imagine it is because you said that was your religious belief. It seems these contextual adverts are only paid for by dating services, and there is not enough content that the ad software can track in order to make itself relevant very well so the best keyword it can find is “single”.
I agree that the growth will be in the use of smaller, more focused, niche social networks that cater to a particular interest, hobby or vocation. These smaller sites will allow like-minded individuals and groups to connect, exchange ideas and receive genuine and useful support.
These kinds of sites will also be attractive to advertisers as they get targeted demographics to spend their online advertising budgets on.
Thanks to sites such as ning, anyone can start a niche social network about anything. There’s also a search engine to help find niche social networks that lists thousands of networks for a whole range of subjects, http://findasocialnetwork.com
How bad do I suck that I don’t belong to a single one of those other than Classmates. I don’t even use that one but I belong.
I can barely keep up with my blog let alone a Social Network. I wouldn’t even know where to start. What does Facebook do for you?
Well Facebook is actually not bad. It really suits people who have moved about a bit in life and have friends scattered all over the place. It has a nice simple interface and is clean and easy to use. The fact it is so popular is good as your friends will probably already be on there, and you dont need to get them to sign up.
The drawbacks are that they have a constant stream of novelty applications which make the simple sleek interface messy and cluttered on some peoples profiles.
Keeping up with everything is indeed a challenge – it seems to get worse everyday as we take on more and more.
seondesign.net : social networks are those places where many people can meet together talk together , they can save their different things over their online like bookmarks, pictures, videos etc.
While widgets are being converted into Facebook apps in hopes of raking in ad dollars – no one is making much money and standards on ads on social network sites are still not set. the Web Analystics Association has a new wiki if you want to get in on the discussion. http://waasocialmediawiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
Widgets are one more item to the list of monetizing problems online advertisers face along with profiting from social networking Web applications and reversing the downward trend on click-through ads on Google and Yahoo!. Even when they are converted to Facebook applications, only a few widgets rocket, many fizzle.
I noticed LinkedIn didn’t make the top 15 list but it’s worth checking out because it’s where many people in business go (often to job hunt). The best part of networking besides connecting is “profile peeking” where you get to learn about people and find strangers that you’re interested in meeting online because they seem to share a common interest. Mary Fallon, DEMO editor. http://www.demo.com
While hi5 maintains its strong hold in Central America, it faces tough competition in Asia from many social networking sites. Hi5.com comes in first ten ranking in Alexa.com. You can see ranking of Fortune Park Hotels Ltd in http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/fortunehotels.in Alexa.