Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Sept 10, 2008

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I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an Industry Analyst –a good way to get in my head.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

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Web Strategy Summary
Lot of deals, partnerships, and wins announced this week, I’m getting more submissions for PR firms who represent white label social networks. Perhaps most interesting is three separate studies indicating how non-universal social networks really are, important to note as brands approach social networks and communities with a global reach –don’t overextend yourselves.

Research: Social Networks not Ubiqutious
eMarketer, a leading research firm states that social networks are not yet universal, they compare to studies marking awareness, but also note that “44.3% of Internet users in the US will belong to social networks by the end of 2008” Synovate Research shows similar findings.

Press: Communispace announces growth
This announcement touts 11 new clients for the year for this ‘insight community vendor’ which include MTV, Chili’s Grill & Bar and Verizon Telecom and including a deal with InterContintental Hotels.

Communications: MySpace useful during hurricane
Like many social media tools, social networks are a key communication tool before, during, and after disasters for citizens and local and national recovery groups, MySpace has proven effective in this last hurricane.

Deployment: US Gov has Facebook for Spies
Speaking of government, the CIA and other government agencies have their own social network for spies, called A-Space, I wonder if they have scrabulous!

Competitor: Groupsites takes aim at Ning
Another easy to get started white label social network has appeared called Groupsites, which is in the same market as Ning, the key differentiator? productivity is at the core of the use case.

Applications: Context launches Applications
In it’s quest for creating applications for Facebook, Context creates facebook page for Top Bartender (Absolut) Today I’m toasting (Miller) and Got Pies (Microsoft’s IE), all interactive marketing.

Deal: Pluck wins Sun Times
Media site The Sun-Times News Group uses Pluck to power social elements to their site. Pluck Social Media tools bring reader forums, blogs and feed tools to the media site.

Deal: eBay selects ONESite
White label social network wins ebay sustainability community for World of Good site. I know other competitors are within eBay, which is not uncommon for large enterprises to be disparate with vendor selection.

Acquisition: iSkoot gobbles Social IM
Consolidation in the mobile and voip space as iSkoot acquires social networking client Social.IM. What’s in store? Dean Takahashi says: “Social.IM’s platform will work well with iSkoot’s own upcoming mobile web push services”

Analsyis: Adoption rates of Faecbooks Redesign
Compete has an interesting analysis marking the adoption rates of Facebook users to the slow to roll out redesign, as well as how many users reverted.

Partnership: NBC and LinkedIn clinch deal
A combination of content and social feature deal allows NBC viewers and LinkedIn members to share information, and connect with each other between these two sites. good marriage.

Services: Lithium gets serious about services
With this announcement of enterprise class services and support teams, they hire a VP of client services to lead the teams forward. Services, Strategy and Support account for 80% of the enterprise buy in my opinion.

Impacts: Reactions of bad behaviors
How not to get banned from commenting link via colleague Nate Elliott, and are comments more like Slander than Libel?

Index: List of Community Platforms
Dion has a great list of community platforms, I’m also resesarching this market and will put forth a list of enterprise class community platforms for interactive marketers at Fortune 5000 companies in late Oct. It’s hard to segment as the actual list is so many vendors.

Movement: Protests gain new fuel through Facebook
Movements often start small, and with social networks, the snowball effect can quickly add many new members, shows this article about protesters who organize online –often in Facebook.

PR professionals that have clients in this space, should subscribe to this blog, and ensure their clients are put on this digest by sending me an email, or better yet, leave a comment. If you work for a white label community platform, keep me updated, I want to know of your wins.

11 Replies to “Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Sept 10, 2008”

  3. Jeremiah – loving your digest as usual. Always a treasure trove of good content and updates.

    I am going to disagree with you slightly on Dion’s list of white label providers (and in full disclosure, I work for one of the companies – Mzinga – that made it on the list). The reason I take issue is that I think it’s irresponsible to put Joomla and Drupal as the top two choices. Don’t get me wrong, they both provide great technology but 95% of companies are not well equipped to use them because 1) they requires a fair amount of customization to get it them to do what you want it to do (so all of a sudden, they aren’t so free) and 2) there are no services wrapped around it so you are left to figure out community for yourself. Dion tries to wave this away by saying “people will figure this out over time.” While true, do major brands want to risk damaging their image by stumbling along?

    I know it’s important to balance cost with benefits but in this case, I think Dion has missed his mark, at least in the order of the list (he has a lot of other good companies like Lithium, KickApps, Jive, etc. on there). They are more in line with what many businesses need. And of course, there’s always us! 😉

    Best,
    Aaron | @astrout

  5. Aaron

    We agree actually, these are completely different classes of companies. The Wave I’m working on for Forrester (on Community Platform Vendors) will have just one class of companies –not mixed together.

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  8. The Synovate survey referenced in your first article “Research: Social Networks not Ubiquitous” includes the following: “When asked if they agree with the statement “I am losing interest in online social networking”, 36% of the social networking site members were in the affirmative; led by Japan (55%), Slovakia (48%), Canada (47%), Poland and the US (45%).”

    That doesn’t sound good for the future? Comments?

  9. Bill

    It’s hard for me to comment on other research firms analysis and findings, as I wasn’t part of it, but I’ll give my own reactions, but just from my personal side.

    We’ve seen and heard about this before, in fact, social networks like Facebook have as well. Recently, they announced that they would rate and ‘tier’ applications to ensure they’re providing a useful experience. Therefore, expect social networks to crank up a notch of their user experience.

    The important number to watch is how the increase in adoption still continues to rise –actions speak louder than words.

    I’m with you however, we should question at what point does this become over-satured. The answer? when it stops adding value given how much we put in.

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