Social Notworking

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester had an interesting blog on "The Many Challenges of Social Networking". Several of the replies referred to a growing trend of "Social Notworking".

Well, of course social networking is growing rapidly, but I still like one of the tenants that Google keeps repeating - it is all about the Internet. One site - even as great as Facebook or MySpace are - will never satisfy all of the needs of users. The Internet has created a level playing field.

To me, there is tremendous value in this new wave of social networking. But it can not be the captive domain of a few megasites, even if those megasites are dominant. Every web site needs to be able to take advantage of the power of social networking. And it is more than just blogs and walls. Companies will weave social networking into their applications to make their web sites more engaging. This may mean some of the ad money spent on banner ads - even targetted banner ads on the mega-social networks - will get spent on companies building social networking into their own sites. Not to compete with the Facebooks - but to be more useful to their existing and hoped-for users.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi Bob. Just yesterday I wrote a post that made the same point, with a focus on owning and running your own web apps, including social apps. And, as you can see, I put high hopes in the part you are going to play in this... :-)
http://stage.vambenepe.com/archives/161
All the best!
February 12, 2008 at 12:32 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ringside Winding Down

A year ago, a group of us met in a pizza parlor to discuss how we could bring the social web to every website and business. In January, we launched Ringside Networks with seed funding from Matrix Partners, one of the best VC firms in the country. By the end of March we released into open source an initial beta of our Social Application Server – a very ambitious project. We got some very positive reviews on our approach, our implementation and the need in the marketplace for every website to become social. We were ready for our Series A round of funding, and in late May we received a number of term sheet offers from the very best VC firms. As we were about to finalize our funding, one of the biggest non-evil Internet companies asked if we would have interest in being acquired instead. After a lot of thought and debate, we decided that the larger company would enable us to get our technology to market sooner and with more impact. The story sounds almost too good to be true. And it w...
Read more

Capitalism vs. the Three Legged Stool

Image
Wikipedia defines: " Capitalism  is an  economic system  in which trade, industry and the  means of production  are controlled by private owners with the goal of making  profits  in a  market economy ." This definition has always bothered me. I prefer a different model where there is equal recognition of the three primary drivers behind the success of a company: Owners Employees Customers I like to think of it as a three legged stool, where each leg is as important as the other.  One gets too large or small and the stool tips over. The free market is supposed to take care of Employees and Customers.  Employees because the Owners will create so many jobs that due to supply and demand, employees will receive competitive pay.  Customers because if the owners are not building the right thing, then they can go elsewhere. As someone who has helped to build about 10 startup companies now, I have seen the power in mak...
Read more

Galbraith Revisited

Image
To follow up on my post from a while ago, Galbraith sited 5 key reasons for the 1929 crash and following depression: 1. The bad distribution of income. 2. The bad corporate structure. 3. The bad banking structure. 4. The dubious state of the foreign balance. 5. The poor state of economic intelligence. To compare this to today: 1. Bad income distribution. 1929 - Top 5% received about 33% of all personal income. 1929 - Top 1% held 44% of all wealth. 2000 - Top 1% received about 20% of all personal income. 2004 - Top 1% held 34% of all wealth. Here is a picture of the real income gains between 1979 and 2005 by percentage. It is clear that the top income groups are gaining ground faster than lower income groups - creating an income distribution that approaches 1929. 2. Bad corporate structure. In the 1929 era there had been a large rise in a "vast structure of holding companies and investment trusts... In particular the dividends from the operating companies paid the interest on t...
Read more