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?
Blogging Communities – connect with us!
by Tom on February 10, 2008
in Networking
One of my goals outlined earlier in the year was to meet, network and share information. I figure it is about time I started working on that side of things so I have joined a few of the main blogging communities.
Technorati is a search engine for blogs which claims to be currently tracking 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media and is a pretty well recognised authority in terms of all things blogging. Check out my Technorati Profile here and add me to your favourites.
MyBlogLog is a social network for bloggers owned by Yahoo!. It is very popular and provides those widgets you see on so many blogs which contain pictures and links back to the profiles of a blogs recent readers or communities. You can find my profile here.
BlogCatalog is similar in nature although not quite as popular as MyBlogLog. Nevertheless its use is still fairly widespread. Again it is recognised by its widgets which can be seen on many popular blogs. You can find and connect with me here.
LinkedIn is an altogether more serious affair. It is much more business orientated and more professional. This is not really a blogging community but bloggers do use it a lot. It is more the place where more serious business relationships develop. I have been a member of LinkedIn for sometime now but have never really got into it. This year I hope to make many new connections. Want to help me out? Start by visiting my profile.
So thats about it for now. Please do visit my profiles and connect with me. It is well known that networking plays an important part in success so lets help each other out. By all means comment and leave a link to your profiles so I can check those out too!