Social networking is NOT the greatest thing since sliced bread!

Social networking has exploded in recent years. The wave of social networking sites is reminiscent of the mushrooming e-commerce sites during the late 1990s. The entry barriers are so low that anyone can create the infrastructure for a social networking platform with minimal investment. What is more interesting is the frenetic pace of adoption of some of these sites.

So, what is all this frenzy about? Is it curiosity that drives people to become members of these sites and “network socially” through them? Or, is it just a bunch of kids with too much time trying to play with the latest online fad? Or, is online social networking indeed such a significant innovation that it warrants all this attention? Here's my take on the social networking phenomenon from an “innovation” standpoint.

Social Networking v. 1.0
Social networking in the physical world has existed throughout history. The new, virtual breed of social networking obviously has its roots in the Internet. So, how did it all start?

In my opinion, online forums and groups were the v.1.0 of the online social networking world. Fundamentally, the objective of an online group or forum is to give users the opportunity to converse and congregate in cyberspace, thus sharing ideas, opinions; debating issues, exchanging stuff, seeking advice, and doing any of a myriad other things made possible by the Web. The advantage of making group communication less disruptive (through daily digests and the like) is icing on the cake.

Characteristics
There are remarkable similarities in the way social networks and online groups / forums approach the same objective. Private online groups & forums are typically virtual manifestations of real-world groups (at least the private ones) – in which case they are brought into being primarily to facilitate non-disruptive communication. So, in these cases, relationships exist even prior to the group being set up. Otherwise they are no different from a group of e-mail addresses created in your Outlook.

It gets interesting in case of public online groups and forums because even strangers can join these groups. So, in effect they facilitate strangers with common goals, interests & passions meeting. Additionally, online groups provide a private space for sharing files, photos, etc., polling members, scheduling meetings, planning events, etc.

Present Wave: The key difference
The current wave of social networking (let us say v.2.0) pretty much offers the same functionality. The key differentiator though is that the present breed of social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, etc. allow users to not only browse groups and (public) discussion forums, but also lets them explore and discover other users who share the same interests and passions.

Thus, instead of networking with groups en masse you can connect with individuals separately. But for this difference the current breed of social networking sites is pretty much the same as the earlier breed. This to me is nothing more the same old wine with a twist.

So, what is all this ado about? It is just evolution of technology at work.

How Many More Accounts & Passwords?

The blogosphere is replete with frustration over "centralized social networking sites" (e.g., Krishnan, jEN...). The reason is pretty simple and straightforward. The way the ‘social’ aspect of the Internet exists today, you have no choice but to open and manage accounts over several sites to network around "social media."

So when will this multi-account networking end? What will it take for us to network with people over the Web regardless of where they have their "virtual media homes" set up?

Personality Fragmentation
I believe "the social realm" in the virtual world has to eventually mirror in many ways the physical realm. In the physical world, when someone looks at me they see one persona. During interactions over a period of time, they may get to see different emotions, expressions and the ilk. But, all that behavior manifests eventually in one personality. So, over a period of time with continued interactions, they get to know my likes (& dislikes), interests, passions, friends, family, and so on. Those who get invited home even get insights into what I own, value and cherish – books, music, videos, etc. In other words, they get to build a 360-degree view of me over time.

In the virtual world, outside of the words that I use to talk about myself (profile) or about something and the few photos or videos (faked?) that I share about myself, there is no personality. Further, my profile & personality is split across sites depending on the use I am putting the site to. Thus people publish content (regardless of media), participate in threaded conversations, manage schedules, etc., on myriad sites.

Further, the lack of physical interactions is a big impediment in virtual communities. There is no sense of bonding, belonging or togetherness unless it is an essentially physical group with presence online to facilitate remote communication (e.g., Yahoogroups).

Unification
So, for a (truly) virtual community to become socially connected, and to congregate (albeit virtually), there is a need to provide each member with an opportunity to know as much about the other members in the community. In other words, it becomes important to consistently expose common profiles about members across social networks irrespective of the platform or site where the network congregates.

By the very nature of today’s fragmented social applications, this is impossible. For instance, it is not possible for me today to expose my Flickr photos and Wordpress posts to members of a YouTube amateur movie club that I am part of.

So, what next?
Thus, the need is to seamlessly network with social and professional circles without endlessly opening accounts, maintaining passwords, entering profile information, checking threaded conversations, viewing published content, etc. on various social platforms. Open identification seems to be a step in the right direction.

Maybe Digital Lifestyle Aggregation (DLA) is the way to get there. However, I kind of felt many of Marc Canter’s concepts of DLA have been around for some time. One question that pops up in my mind is: What if a service does not expose itself with an API?

So, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger et al. are you listening?

Personalization of Social Networks

In a recent article in NYtimes.com the technological landscape of social networks and its future are discussed. The author states that large social networking sites like MySpace & Facebook have attracted scores of people with dissimilar profiles and interests. New social networking players are creating social Web sites tailored to cater to niche interests. So, how are these niche social networking sites differentiating themselves from the large, monolithic sites?

Differentiation
The most common differentiation strategy of niche social networking sites is to segment the market - demographies (teens, tweens, singles, etc.), interests (travel, stock investing, etc.), affiliations (political, business, etc.), geographies (country, city, etc.), profiles (language, etc.) and so on. These new social networking sites incorporate features relevant to the market segments they cater to. So, in that sense the site is personalized to the collective needs of its user community.

Personalization
But, what about personalization of the social network at a more individual level? Many social networking sites offer users display preferences such as 'skin settings,' and 'profile settings' for personalization. Other sites feature filtering systems to display content of relevance and interest to the user.

In general, the personalization that most state of art social networking sites - both large and niche - feature is of a very rudimentary, even inconsequential nature. There is a need to take personalization to the next level. Sites have to go beyond letting users control what they get to see or what they display in their profile pages.

Future
Personalization in the future will focus on what users can do online in their social networks. This creative freedom will pertain to mixing-n-matching media in new ways - for example, publishing a music video with its music sheet and lyrics. It will entail displaying personal profiles in unique ways, such as publishing a list of favorite movies or rock n'roll artistes in the personal page.

Social networking sites in the future will permit personalized collaboration. For instance, some members in a social network might have editorial control over the content that others in the group might post. Personalization of communication channels is another area that social networks will focus on in the future.

Disclosure: I am a co-founder of Cylive - a social application that empowers users to network in highly personalized ways.

The Future of Social Networking

Ever since the Web2.0 phenomenon, the favorite flavor of the current technology trend (at least in the consumer Internet space) has without question been social networking. Technology pundits (despite a fair share of detractors) have harped ad infinitum and ad nauseam on how the "read-write Web (or Web 2.0)" is going to revolutionize the Internet. Now that people (entrepreneurs, geeks, capitalists, professionals, businessmen, netizens, etc.) are all busy either churning out or forming social networks, where is the trend headed? What is social networking going to morph into?

Segmentation
Several bloggers have written about the segmentation of social networking (Alex Iskold; Wilhelm; etc.). Popular social networking sites are positioned to serve different segments of society. Common approaches of differentiation include media types (horizontal - e.g., Flickr for photos), industry verticals (vertical - e.g., stockpickr for finance), geographies (e.g,. Mixi in Japan), interests (e.g, Dogster for dog-owners), and myriad others.

Fragmentation
Now, each of us has a profile consisting of hundreds of attributes - sex, age, marital status, race, color, religion, caste, language, city, state, region, country, education, profession, employment, interests, hobbies, likes, dislikes, etc. So, eventually would I be required to network in a 100 different sites to reach out to other people who share my profile in some way?

So, with the ongoing fragmentation, when will people get overdosed on social networking? When will people get sick of splitting themselves into multiple user-IDs and passwords in the virtual world? I would say sooner than you think.

Deja Vu
The origin of social networking applications can be traced to the "online groups" and "forums" phenomena. While online groups are primarily geared towards private groups, forums are better geared for public (published) conversations. Social networks somehow appear to me to weld the two concepts together. Key differences though are that social networks enable non-disruptive public conversations and content-centric conversations. The icing on the cake is the democratization of the network with ratings and recommendations.

Analyzing the amoebic explosion of social networking sites, I cannot help drawing a parallel with the historical lessons of the previous boom (and the subsequent bust). Indeed, what we are witnessing today in the C2C (consumer-to-consumer) or P2P (peer-to-peer) space of "social networks" seems to be very similar to that seen in the 1990s in the B2C (and even B2B) realm. The social networking fragmentation is eerily similar to the online shopping sites of Web1.0. The companies that survived the earlier bust were those that consolidated quickly and offered one-stop services in their respective spaces.

Future
The exponential mushrooming of social networking sites is the result of the mad scramble for establishing niches in Web2.0. It is my belief that eventually sanity has to take over and the space has to witness convergence. Indeed, the future of social networking lies in the consolidation of the space.

Disclosure: I am a co-founder of Cylive.

Web 2.0 Memetic Attributes
(Contained in prior Web 2.0 descriptions of thought leaders)

Underlying Philosophy:

1. Web as a ‘computing’ platform:
   
   
   
   • Web-based applications (online services-oriented, free ‘right-to-use’) instead of software packaged product (distribution-oriented, priced ‘license-to-use’);
   
   
   • Multiple device connectivity (transcending a single device) and data availability;
   
   
   • Open, public application programming interfaces (i.e., provide programmatic interfaces through Web services APIs, which accord formal semantic meaning to data). Adherence to open standards;
   
   
   • Release data from ‘proprietary & copyrighting’ shackles, i.e. low barriers for data reuse (Relinquish control over and make data, code, content, services & even ideas shareable & transformable that permit their recombinant use). Permit screen-scraping.
   
   
   • Leverage value-added data services (for e.g., in the form of mashups) for competitive advantage (e.g., housingmaps.com);
   
   
   • ‘Perpetual beta’, i.e., continually updated application services software (juxtaposed to periodic releases of software products)
   
   
2. User Empowerment:
   
   
   
   • Customer self-service (Do-It-Yourself) and ‘Point of Presence’ – users are present virtually on the Web
   
   
   • ‘Hackability’ – flexibility to easily remix (and consume remixed) content / data in (presumably) innovative ways, i.e., rights granted to use the content in new & exciting contexts. It encourages ‘collective & cumulative creation’ of (emergent) systems with higher utility / usefulness. Support creation of mashups;
   
   
   • Vox populi / Democracy-based, i.e. uses voting to filter content for quality (often doing the job significantly better than editors);
   
   
   • Users, their creations & remixed ‘concoctions’ are radically trusted. They are treated like co-developers (e.g., Wikipedia) – erase the boundaries between producers & consumers (radical decentralization of power);
   
   
   • Enhanced user participation, communication & collaboration, even connecting communities & facilitating (online) social networking
   
   
   • Inversion of control: individuals and groups slacken copyright & intellectual property ownership rights to create a culture in which amalgamated, intermixed media has more value (not less).
   
   
   
   
3. Creator-Consumer(s) 2-way & multi-way interaction:
   
   
   
   • Participation-enabled architecture (e.g., read and write systems such as Wikis, Weblogs, etc.) used to create network effects
   
   
   • Harnessing collective intelligence – users contribute & add value, for e.g., annotating content to enhance richness of data, contributing to metadata definitions using tags, etc. which facilitates (unintended) discovery of exotic, ‘out of the ordinary’ content created in new contexts gets better the more people use it), etc. To promote this ‘(system) learning’ mechanism, implicit means are often used to collect user data (e.g. popular tags) during normal use of the application;
   
   
   • Real-time monitoring of user behavior to study feature acceptance;
   
   
   • Attention-based (democracy based) aggregation of content. Aggregators use the most-traversed navigation paths (i.e. most frequently visited microcontent) for determining relevance.
   
   


4. Data Exposure & Management:
   
   
   
   • Open accessibility of and granular addressability of data / content (microcontent, regardless of media types, such as image, audio, video, hyperlink, blog, etc.), thus allowing data discovery & manipulation in new ways;
   
   
   • Support data / content syndication (without being concerned about how such syndicated data gets aggregated) and lightweight user interfaces, development & business models. Features notification for syndicated content changes;
   
   
   • Filtering of data in context sensitive ways using recommendations (contextualized trust, respect & relations), reputation (typically rooted in cultural contexts) and personalization (profile-based)
   
   
5. Mass service of micro-markets (i.e., the ‘Long Tail’):
   
   
   
   • Increasingly cost-effective to focus on the interests of large number of small entities (individuals, groups, etc.);
   
   
   • Large transaction volumes necessitate ‘operations becoming a core-competency’ and (cost-effective) scalability becoming a key success factor;


6. Glocalization of content:
   
   
   
   • Making global information available to (conceptually) local social & cultural contexts and giving people the flexibility to find, organize, share and crate information in a locally meaningful (interests, goals, values, projects, even geographies) fashion that is globally accessible. In the extreme sense, ‘local’ is just the ‘individual’.

Enabling Technologies, Features & Applied Techniques:

1. Rich Web application UI: Semantically valid (X)HTML and / or microformats, Advanced UI languages such as XUL & SVG; CSS, XML, AJAX, Flash Remoting; Blogrolling / logrolling / link-logging; Separation of structure & style; GreaseMonkey
2. Web Services: RSS / ATOM (with trackbacks, permalinks & comments for syndication & aggregation), SSE, RDF; REST, SOAP or XML Web service APIs;
3. Techniques: Tagging for multiple overlapping associations, rather than rigid categories (folksonomy, not taxonomy)
4. Rich Media: Podcasts, Video-blogging, etc.
5. Application Framework: Ruby on Rails
   

Emergent Application Systems:

1. Social Applications: Search, Networking - YASNs (Yet another Social Network such as FOAF & XFN systems – Friend of a Friend & XHTML Friends Network respectively), Bookmarking, News, Media / Content Sharing, Knowledge Sharing, Recommendation Systems, Annotation Systems, Reputation, Calendaring, etc.
2. Collaboration Applications: Project Management, Event & Activity Planning, Fiction (or Non-Fiction) Publishing, etc.
3. Mashups: Auction mapping, Classifieds mapping, Local Business, Real Estate Listings, Business Directory mapping, etc.