Social Collaboration -- The Next Step in Social Networking – Part 1

Implications: Social networking is evolving beyond MySpace and Facebook. Social networking is evolving towards social collaboration.

Analysis: MySpace, FaceBook, and YouTube are all part of trend we call social networking. Social networking is an outgrowth of the Internet experience.

Social networks are connections of people and organizations; it’s a network of relationships. The people and organizations in the social network are tied to one another through some type of relationship. The relationship may be based on common values, common opinions, common ideas of an issue, common life style, cultural values, blood relatives, friendship, employment, business, religion, illness, hobbies, military background, foods, travel destinations, etc. In other words, a social network connects people in nearly an endless number of ways. The numbers of connections a person has to other people in the community in which they reside are typically very complex. All this comprises a social network.

Social networks are never exactly the same for two or more people. If the social networks of two or more people were exactly the same they would be living the exact same life.

Popular websites like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube enable millions of people who share some common bond. What are shared are opinions, videos and pictures. People you have never met or do not even know personally are posting videos of themselves singing, reading, acting, and tormenting. Unfortunately these sites have also been misused by people to spread hate. Social networking is not all about spreading beauty but then again beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Social networking online requires the use of web-based tools. Online social networks like a MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and a myriad of other smaller companies rely on users interacting through video, chat rooms, file sharing, blogging, etc. To some extent you can even count cellular text messaging as a form of social networking. What was unimaginable 10 years ago is now a thriving business. However, it is a business that is still in the midst of figuring out how to optimize its revenues.

The problem with social networking as a business is that no one really has created a business model that can result in user generated revenue. It is true the publicly traded stock of companies such as MySpace have gone into orbit. However, we are only talking about stock price, which is created mostly by user demand for the stock. When you do a comparison of publicly traded social network companies and their revenue you are left wondering how shareholder price and revenue be so disconnected from each other. The reality is that social networking companies have yet to fully realize the revenue potential of what they have.

What exactly is keeping the social network company from making more money? The answer is: Social networks today look like disaster areas.  An advertiser has enormous difficulty trying to figure out what to advertise and to whom to advertise. The advertiser wants to bring relevant information based on consumers need at the time of the site visit.  In reality, the advertiser provides pseudo relevant data and the user community acitively takes steps to avoid the advertising companies.  Specific social networks like CofeMom, Pets.com, etc. managed to attract a relatively homogenous audience, but even this group might get irritated by receiving food advertisements while searching.  General social network sites like MySpace and Facebook are visited by a hodgepodge of people from all walks of life.  It is a challenge for sites like MySpace and Facebook to bring relevant advertising information to users without jeopardizing user privacy.

Social networks today are organized around a variety of different topics, categories, and personal tastes. Yet it all seems disorganized.  Upon initial inspection, these sites appear to be organized but when we associate several interests together from the multitude of sites it suddenly appears disorganized. On a certain level the data is structured and yet it is not.  We are looking at systems of structured islands of information within unstructured ocean of raw data.

True social networks enable people and organizations to grow; to become more than whom or what they are. The social network needs be able to take all of this data that users have dumped on it and integrate it in some manner that results in a product or service that renders value.

Social networks today can be described as systems of structured data within unstructured. Think of a library filled with books (this is the structured data), none of the books are shelved they are just scattered randomly all over the floor. Each book (the structured data) contains data organized in chapters. However, there books are not organized by category, alphabetically, topic, or by author. In fact the library shelves look like a tornado hit them. You have unstructured data with structured data. This is what social network look like today.

What I am saying is that these sites contain tons of data that is not being mined properly for its value. What I am saying is that aside from what these sites do: Give Joe Blow or Joan Blow 15 minutes of fame/15 minutes in the spotlight, they do nothing but serve as massive chat rooms. they do nothing but server as a series of interconnected nodes with personal pages found at the end of each node.

Social collaboration brings more value to users and brings sanity to an insane structure and process. Social collaboration facilitates more interaction between the nodes and more meaningful the use of the available data for the end user.

Social collaboration is a process by which people are able to organize data, enhance and assign values to data so that this information can be easily communicated to others. This is not a rating system or a blog. This is harnessing the power of the collective intelligence in a social network. Some may call this a next step in what is being called Web 2.0. I prefer to focus on the term “social collaboration”.

What occurs on the Internet today are a series of discrete and disjointed activities that include:

·       Collaborative bookmarking
·       Searching
·       Clicking
·       Rating
·       Tagging
·       Buying
·       Blogging
·       Wikis
·       Discussion listing

There is a need to pull this all together in a manner that is automated and facilitates information sharing, discussion and ultimately mining. This is called social collaboration. 

What we have today can be described as “Consumer Abandonment” and “Chaos”. What is needed is a set of tools and processes that can structure the unstructured data. Advertisements need to be targeted to consumer in such a way that they become advisories. The process of advertising is about answering questions from consumers who are looking for answers.

The information that is embedded in so many websites today is not timely. Information needs to be timely or more to the point needs to be viewed as “just in time information”.

The information in the web is not just information form the carrier or advertiser it is also from the users. The information camps need to be brought together in such a way that the final result is bigger than the parts that comprise the information.