In this blog, I strive to provide a balanced viewpoint of both the benefits and challenges of a web strategy, it’s easy for us to become over-hyped and then fall right into the pit of exuberance.
From white label social networks to existing social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and on, there’s been much hoopa raised. Yet, we should always remember the challenges that are facing these tools, as there are many difficulties to overcome.
The Many Challenges of Social Networks:
Each of the following hurdles can be overcome, but first, let’s identify them.
Difficult to Monetize
Even Google says it’s having a hard time monetizing social networks, why? The use case is completely different. Members aren’t hunting for information like they do on a search, instead they are communicating with each other, and self-expressing. (We’ve data to back that up too), Bakardo agrees. How bad is bad? “Marketers say as few as 4 in 10,000 people who see their ads on social networking sites click on them”Excess of Players
In the case of the many white label social networks (white label means you can rebrand, and create your own Facebook), there are too many players in the space. As a result, I spoke with CIO magazine and share with them our thoughts on the future of these many products. Consolidation will happen, and many will be irrelevant.As Marketers Move In, Users Move Out
Remember Friendster? Tribe, or waay back and eCircles? Nothing is new, as communities form, marketers will move in, and in some cases bastardize the experience and the hip, cool, influencers will leave to the next network.Untrustworthy Member Data
In many cases (I’ve seen reports of up to one-third) of users submit inaccurate information on their profile. As a result, marketing efforts will not be aimed at the right audiences, members continuing to be an elusive target.Lack of Metrics Makes Success Hard to Measure
For many marketers who want to deploy a campaign on a social network, access to server metrics isn’t always available. As a result, they have to often visually monitor the interaction on the site, or measure click throughs to their site. In some of the more sophisticated platforms, a crude dashboard is provided.Stalkers and Other Unwanted Activity Ruins Lives
Child stalkers in MySpace continues to be a problem, and in some cases, masking oneself as someone else is easy, and to readily fool others. As a result, one young teen committed suicide from the deception, rejection, and embarrasment from a peer’s mother.Privacy Concerns Mount as Developers Move In
The great hoopla and community push back from the recent Beacon experiment, launching of newsfeeds, and social networks sharing too much information with third party widget developers puts members at risk, and visibly makes them uncomfortable.Strings Attached to Membership: Difficult to Leave
According to this NYT article, leaving Facebook is difficult, there are hooks, saved accounts, and ways to continue to reconnect to the site, even after you’ve left.Plateau or Social Network Fatigue?
I’m starting to see some reports from sources that suggest that the usage of social networks are slowing down, if not reducing perhaps it’s from the endless tasks that occur, or the shinyness has rubbed off.Successful Networks have hard time scaling
Facebook and Twitter (yes a social network too) are suffering from scaling issues, as a result, their sites have a great deal of downtime or latency. The complicated applications will only increase in intricacy as more users are added.Loss in workplace productivity “Social not-working”
Companies, organizations, and individuals are concerned about the time wasted in managing social network profiles, in some cases, companies have banned Facebook from their employees, often using Firewalls. (submitted by Beth Kanter and David Mitchell in comments)Got others? leave a comment
If you’ve got one that I missed, I may add it here and credit you.
Need more information? check out my weekly digest of the social networking space that I publish every Wednesday.
Lastly, if you want to connect with my further, I recommend you follow me on twitter, and I’ll follow you back, we’re furthering the conversation there.
Given the newness of the medium, what’s said, where, when, and by whom could open up legal challenges not anticipated.
From the nonprofit angle and fundraising, the dollar amounts aren’t as large as the number of people joining a fundraising cause. Nonprofits are still assessing how to leverage relationships with people joining these fundraising causes and further engage them.
On an implementation level, nonprofits are concerned with staff “wasting” valuable time on non-productive activities on soc nets, thus increasing the level of skepticism about all social media strategies.
A few thoughts.
– Social networking has subtle culture coding – breaking down hierarchy and encouraging co-opration across siols is alien to some culture and they view encouragement to do this as insulting. One client in NE Asia described social neworking as US imperialism – or at least CA implerialism
– more technical ones like management of identity, protection of corporate IP, security (malware on the channels)…
A favorite term I’m using is “social notworking” to describe the downside of lost labor
Curiosity peak-behavior. It’s really quite hard to add something to the slew of things people can do out of the box these days.
As a result, people might have an initial “new toy” interest first but then get bored (Facebook?) and move on.
Sometimes I think there are too many different social networks – every business/ group/ organisation seems to think it’s a great idea to have their own social network for their clients/ stakeholders etc but who really has the time to sign up to and engage fully with so many? It may be more advantageous in some cases to leverage existing networks where your audience are already engaged.
I agree with David that social networking can easily become “social notworking.” Because I don’t work for a company and do whatever I want, I get sucked into reading blog posts following twitter. Most of the time, I learn something new, and that’s a good thing. However, I haven’t been posting on my own blogs as much and my book sales are down since I began following twitter.
I can see the lost labor issue spreading.
This goes hand-in-hand with your excess of players point: the dominant player varies depending on country and language, and that becomes a barrier to networking. In a way this is nothing new (ex, Yahoo! News may be big in the US but a distant second in Italy). But this issue matters a lot more in the case of social networks, which risk becoming parochial networks — relatively speaking. I am mainly on Facebook, but I have family in Italy and good friends in Spain, Germany and UK; this means that either I miss out on networking w/ them, or that I need to join (and be active) on MySpece and Bebo as well as Facebook. Forgetddaboutit! That’s particularly frustrating because the value of social networking for me really increases as distance increases: I can see my buddies in the Valley whenever I want to, but obviously the same isn’t true of people thousands of miles away. Same thing is happening with microblogging platforms like Twitter by the way… agh.
I think there are two types of fatigue – one is that people get irritated with being asked to join ‘yet another’ network – more signups, more profile tailoring, etc … the second is along the same lines as Ruud is talking about – once I’ve signed up, found long lost friends, and said ‘hi’, there is a sense of ‘now what?’ – the social networks that last will be those that provide an obvious and compelling answer to that question …
The challenge is really on a long-term. How long can the current type of SocialNotworking’s hold on?
While not so hyped, MySpace is doing things right, by adding value to their current services (video, news).
In the long run, it’s all about the way these services can aggregate funcionality, perhaps by trailing the same path that Google did.
With Social Graph initiatives, OpenSocial and DataPortability ther might be a chance to unify our core profiles and delegate them to niche networks, just like it happens in the REAL WORLD.
It’s all about core interests, something that current networks (even with groups or fans), aren’t keen on.
My bet goes to niche networks. Kind like the long tail of social networks.
On the social “not-working”… totally agree that it happens, but I think it’s drive by more than a desire to procrastinate. I think it shows how strong the need for identity can be, and since “online” is such a big part of our lives, defining that identity online becomes very important (and time-consuming).
The lost labour issue isn’t relevant. If you spend too much time on social media it’s you that has the problem not the social media.
The REAL question is why do people spend so much time?
The challenge for the future of social networks is not data portability or monetization directly.
It’s “contentisation” if you will, people spend a lot of time in social networks because they are exploring its usefulness. When they discover they have none usage drops fast. Hence the plateau. How much friends updates do you really want.
Give me a social network that’s any bloody good and I won’t want to leave. Give me relevant content and it’ll be easier to monetise.
The future of social networks must be as a platform for relevant content delivery, if your Social Network offering isn’t then it’s dead after the shinyness wares off. Watch the space to see current offerings change and new competitors in the field.
I’m looking forward some day soon to seeing well-conceived results-driven evaluation of social networking initiatives, including some evidence that there are businesses out there that appreciate the more open-minded and two-way approach that will flourish.
My view is that ‘results achieved’ is more important than ‘time in attendance.’ You can always find reasons not to do something: the authority to say no is always more widespread than the authority to say yes. But this sort of evidence is needed to show mainstream businesses that potential results are greater than the opportunity cost of not taking social networking seriously.
Ronna (Twitter handle)
The past year or two, largely with Facebook growing the social networks and social computing tools have grown into the edges of mainstream. Nearly every argument made against these tools and services was laid down against e-mail, rich UI desktops (people spent hours changing the colors and arranging the interfaces), and IM years ago.
Where these tools are “seemingly” not working is mostly attributed to a severe lack of defining the value derived from using the tools. These news tools and services, even more so those of us working around them, need to communicate how to use the tools effectively and efficiently (efficiently is difficult as the many of the tools are difficult to use or the task flows are not as simple as they should be). The conceptual models & frameworks for those of us analyzing the tools have been really poor and missing giant perspectives and frameworks.
One of the biggest problems with many of these tools and services is they have yet to move out of early product mode. The tools and services are working on maturity getting features in the tools that people need and want, working on scaling, and iterating based on early adopters (the first two or three waves of people), which is not necessarily how those who follow will use the tools or need the tools to work.
Simplicity and limited options on top of tools that work easily and provide good derived value for the worklife and . As the tools that were disrupters to work culture in the past learned the focus needs to be on what is getting done and let people do it. Friending people, adding applications, tweaking the interface, etc. are not things that lead to easy monetization. Tools that help people really be social, interact, and get more value in their life (fun, entertainment, connecting with people near in thought, filtering information from the massive flow, and using the information and social connections in context where people need it) from the tools is there things must head. We are building the platforms for this, but we need to also focus on how to improve use of these platforms and have strong vision of what this is and how to get there.
‘Selling it to your own company’ We as marketers may feel that we know Social Media Marketing but properly communicating the benefits of it to management/stakeholders can be a daunting challenge in its own.
I’ve personally spoke with people in my current/past companies who felt it was just a ‘fun cool fad’ and didn’t see any benefit from putting resources towards that type of marketing.
On the flip side, we must fully understand this marketing medium and apply it directly to our respective business model and understand the benefit, first, before trying to sell it to others in your company.
‘No sir, I really am doing work on twitter!’ 🙂
just posted to get a discussion going re: challenges as they relate to nonprofit sector .. same or different?
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/02/social-notworki.html
it is the need for social networks to monetize by charging for access or distribution of personal data we may want to question – at least consider. My personal information and online activities have value and it appears that open social aggregates so that information is plentiful, abundant and of value. That is our data and activities providing the content for the business models to support social networks.
But transparency goes both ways. I may not want my information shared and may not understand that it is already too late. Someone will reverse the transparency and once I see where my data is being monetized I will either want to participate in the stream or go off-grid. Maybe the courts will decide or we will move from social networks to private trusted networks where we know what is happening with our information.
It is an evolution.
Jeremiah – addressing your first problem and overall social networking fatigue, these networks are not utilities until one can search news feeds/activities. That provides intent and hence context on social networks if one is allowed to search the NewsFeed.
Lets say I want to know who has traveled to London (potential search for uploaded pics) to find recommendations for hotels, for example.
Here are some thoughts I had on it before:
http://mrinal.vox.com/library/post/searching-news-feed-on-facebook-brings-intent.html
It is aligned to Esther Dyson’s article today in The Wall Street Journal: “The Coming Ad Revolution”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120275709792359627.html
I will have to say that this post sums it up quite well. I think though that social networks have given users information overload and that translates into less actions (clicks, conversions, etc.) on advertising. The SN users are effectively being trained to not see things on the pages, like advertising.
WOW, great input all around by everyone here. Some great points are being made and sometimes I feel as if I’m sitting on the fence just looking to see what will happen next.
As new technology emerges there is always a shift towards that technology, but when it starts to fail, people look for the “next best thing”.
I find that early adopters will always say it’s the best thing ever, but quickly get bored with it.
Jeremy,
We are back at the marketers disconnect when comparing online ads for search and social networking.
Marketers say as few as 4 in 10,000 people who see their ads on social networking sites click on them
The former is looking for a conversion, but it is unreasonable to expect that in a social networking environment. For these sites go for number of impressions with your target market to build brand awareness.
My blog has additional thoughts here
Users don’t click on adverts because they have become immune to ever shriller promises that don’t deliver. That is why they are attracted to social networks because the content is not some facile excuse to expose them to more adverts.
Social Networking is about unconditional giving, just like real relationships, it it surprising businesses don’t get it?
They will do, when they realise that the real revolution is that people just got smarter.
Lack of User Engangement:
Most new social networks fail to engange user or offer him something valuable. There are few social networks that offer more than a scheme of friend connections.
In fact, most successful social networks are built not based in the networker (and its relationships) but in a social object. Flickr builds community around photos, something that you want to see, to comment, to enrich… Same with YouTube and videos. And Facebook feeds from the ability to integrate a lot of third party social objects. Social objects make social networks enjoyable.
Greetings from Spain!
This post has raised some really interesting issues and everyone has raised great points as a result.
The only other challenge that hasn’t already been directly mentioned that I’d like to add to Jeremy’s list is the problem of “authenticity & personal identity” – for example what happens when someone who is not the real brand or idolised person creates up a fake social network? What measures are being put in place to stop others from posing as other people.
I have a few further thoughts:
In the UK we’re continually seeing more corporates wanting to add social networks as part of their marketing & communications mix without knowing exactly why they want to do this – Sergio’s point above is valid. I’d add that many brand & companies have found great ways of engaging with pre-existing communities rather than trying the “white label” approach of creating their own.
Over the last month, I’ve seen a massive growth in the number of brands, companies, artists etc creating “fan” pages within Facebook. They seem to be getting lots of people adding themselves as fan, but I wonder what the next step to these pages will be. Has anyone built one or been asked to for a client?
All comments are valid. The next wave of attention will be capturing the enthusiasm and techn know how of these users as they transition into the work place. As the logical next step, a properly built corporate community of practice network to collaborate, inform, learn and have a little fun will mature into a core business strategy and application.
The biggest problem with white label social networking today is the complexity of the solution vs. the value returned to the user. Sometimes people forget that users are volunteering to offer content and you gotta work to make it easy!
Here is a white paper PDF on the value of simplicity in a social network.
http://socialblogworking.com/postings/6499e57b375e14852c37599d61a470c6
The premise is that you CAN evaluate simplicity and even if you are not an engineer you can tell if your software is heading in the right direction or if it is about to collapse!
I hope that is helpful to folks!
I don’t think the social networking medium lends itself well to advertising, but it can be an important part of marketing. Any space you create that gets people checking in regularly builds familiarity and comfort with your brand. As long as you don’t have to pay too much to achieve that, it is worthwhile.
That said, I am a part of a social networking community (www.Phone-Buddies.com) built around the free exchange of different types of counseling sessions (goal achievement coaching, tarot reading, emotional support, etc.) that isn’t really monetized (just set up to accept donations). Yet that community struggles to grow at all. You would think that with all the money women spend on psychics they find online and talk to by phone that the opportunity to do so for free would be irresistible, and yet it’s still a really small community a year after I joined.
Clearly the monetary value of a community, whether to its owners or users, has nothing to do with its size or success. Social networking is about something else. Somehow some sites just catch on and become very popular places to hang out, but that may be all they ever destined to be.
The problem is, when social network grows, the average ‘quality’ of it’s users (intellectual level, influence, technical skills etc) usually descreases. Thus, the average quality of content also degrades. For every user, there is a point of social network growth, when it’s signal to noise ratio becomes too low for his tastes. Nevertheless, the main social networks monetization model – advertising – is based on quantity, not quality. This leads to a contradiction – when we try to make our social network more profitable, we increase it’s users number, which leads to network’s decay and ultimate death. Until someone finds an effective way to monetize quality, social networks won’t show their true potential.
Very well put! I think for these challenges that you mentioned above, that’s quite true and everybody who care about social networking sites need to face. Hope it’s not Pandora’s box…Well, talking about social networking site, I hope http://www.livechat2go.com, the site that I run can face those challenges well.
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I think one of the ways that future social networking will thrive is in niche markets or networks. I run a such a site (for sailing people) that caters to a group that has very specific needs and desires in what they want out of such as system. A basic “while label” system wouldn’t provide the correct set of requirements to serve this group. In the same way, I suspect that there are a lot of other groups for whom this is also true. Many of my users have no desire to be part of the ‘larger’ world of social networking. And for this, I am able to successfully charge for membership. This is not a bad thing as users recognize that they are getting a service “above and beyond” myspace or facebook (i.e. the features that specifically address their needs), and are willing to support that.
social networking sides are good but the bad thing some people use it in a wrong way its so bad
The most important challenge is the second one, that is, excess of players where every Tom, Dick and Harry owns a social networking website these days.
I agree with David that social networking can easily become “social notworking.” Because I don't work for a company and do whatever I want, I get sucked into reading blog posts following twitter. Most of the time, I learn something new, and that's a good thing. However, I haven't been posting on my own blogs as much and my book sales are down since I began following twitter.
I can see the lost labor issue spreading.
This is a great blog! I would really like to keep reading your blogs. Cant wait for the next post. Good blogs are hard to find!
I can't agree with your points any more:)
All these comments about what happens to those out front of a social network site. I was just thinking…how many people are employed to run and operate a social network site. How many people are employed and earn a living monitoring the comments etc posted on a social network site.
I thought about this concept very interesting.
I absolutely agree with your points of those listed challenges.
Your analysis is really insightful and covers many aspects. Great article!
I wish there was a networking site for talking about real problems or dealing with feelings. So many times a person doesn’t want to burden their friends and if you are spewing about your relationship that can backfire in your inner circle by your friends hating your spouse. Counselors can take weeks to get into and are expensive when often someone just needs to release what is bothering them and maybe get someone who relates to talk to. If they have one let me know. Maybe even something gender specific and call it pmschat or something.Â
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8 years later…