Social Networking - Where Next?

[Plato]

By now I assume most of us are aware of social networking and what it is all about. Most of us conversant with the way of the web have used one or more forms of social networking sites or tools. Indeed social networking has proven to be disruptive technology on the world wide web. We have all witnessed the rise of new business models triggered by this emerging phenomena.

Most of us have one form of account on MySpace, Frienster, FaceBook or dating sites like www.friendsearch.com. The fact is that most of these popular sites that had their early beginnings as pet projects or regular hobbies have evolved into money spinners.
Popular social networking sites are changing the human fabric of the Internet and have the potential to pay off big for investors, but given their youthful user base they are unusually vulnerable to the next new thing. As quickly as users flock to one trendy Internet site, they can just as quickly move on to another, with no advance warning.

MySpace, with 70 million visitors, has become the digital equivalent of hanging out at the mall for today's teens, who load the site with photos, news about music groups and detailed profiles of their likes and dislikes. Other social network sites include Facebook, geared to college students, LinkedIn, aimed at professionals, and Xanga, a blog-based community site. In all, an estimated 300 sites, including smaller ones such as StudyBreakers for high schoolers and Photobucket, a site for posting images, make up the social network universe.

For the moment, MySpace and Facebook are hot. News Corp. paid $580 million last year for MySpace as part of a $1.3 billion Internet acquisition spree. Facebook just received an additional $25 million in venture capital.

Both companies are planning to extend their reach beyond the computer screen to cell phones. Cingular Wireless, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless are starting a service that will allow users to post messages on Facebook's home pages or search for other users' phone numbers and email addresses from a cell phone. MySpace has a pact with Helio, a wireless joint venture between SK Telecom and Earthlink, that will allow users to send photos and update their blogs or profiles by cell phone.

As MySpace and other social networking sites have grown, so, too, have concerns about Internet safety and privacy. The Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported more than 2,600 incidents of adults using the web to target children online in order to engage in sexual activity.

Amidst all the growing concerns the question is what will be the next wave in this constantly evolving terrain. Enthusiast and Critics are eager to know. What are your views matter. So let the thread begin!!

[Tephus]

I think social networking sites will be around for a long time to come. From a marketing point of view, the potential is infinite. It's the ultimate platform for viral marketing, something marketers have a hard time accomplishing with traditional mediums.

[David Tan]

Alot of people do social networking for fun to know more friends and to keep each other updated on one another's lives.

For the rest of us, we do it ultimately for money. Yes, money though our site, through our business, using our profile site to achieve many things that benefits our business.

It strengthens a brand by keeping your business logo, name or sitename permanently in the minds of the people linked to you. It certainly drives traffic. And the feedback, survey, understanding of the market's wants, needs and current fads is priceless, which sharpens your overall business strategy. Who would mind the additional sales? Let's not forget that there's also pockets of revenue to be made from ads.

Only thing is, be prepared to spend a lot of time.

I think that as people put up more info about themselves or their business, people will learn to focus on which info is more relevant to their 'agenda' and improve on the quality of it. Scammers and business offering sub-standard and poor quality products/services will provide vague and dodgy info, while those who got something good will learn how to communicate it's strengths better and provide even more relevant info.

Winners with a winning product/service will shout more and more of their strengths and business that want to catch up will be put under the limelight even more, forcing them either to apply more and more dodgy tactics or improving their offers.

I guess social networking may be like the independant press for businesses?

Anyway, it provides a more personal and in-depth knowledge into the person and the inner workings of a business when working in sync with the corporate website. It certainly makes a person more contactable and approachable.

[Vintage]

i don't join facebook for money. it's for the fun of it.

[jackhumphrey]

Originally Posted by Tephus

I think social networking sites will be around for a long time to come. From a marketing point of view, the potential is infinite. It's the ultimate platform for viral marketing, something marketers have a hard time accomplishing with traditional mediums.

Even I think social marketing as the best platform for marketing. But apart from that we can also perform various strategies like blog marketing, link building, video marketing, web 2.0 marketing, internet marketing to get the desired results.

[Tephus]

Originally Posted by jackhumphrey

Even I think social marketing as the best platform for marketing. But apart from that we can also perform various strategies like blog marketing, link building, video marketing, web 2.0 marketing, internet marketing to get the desired results.

Of course, the next logical step is to combine all these platforms into one avenue, as we're starting to see now. Widgets and RSS readers will be the other big things.

[David Tan]

When everything merges.... does it mean that those who multitask better will get to have an edge over those human beings that do one thing at a time? Does running a website/blog/business/estore require a person to be a good multitasker?

Single-tasker VS Multi-tasker.

Multi-tasker - messy, lower quality, more things done but more mistakes made, and also more things not done? Still, they produce more work and it'll be fine if they can multitask the problems they leave behind. Solution - ???

Single-tasker - focused, objective, more effective but not flexible to new challenges and tasks? In a fast changing and competitive environment... get's lost? Solution - change environment?