According to Spencer Ante (It's Official: U.S. Social Networking Sites See Slow Down) the social networking market is slowing down. One interesting fact presented by Mr. Ante is that although membership numbers on particular sites like Facebook are up, engagement numbers are down- way down. But isn't it about time that we see this trend downward? I mean we've all witnessed Social Networking 1.0- we've beaten that dead horse. And if we aren't absolutely inundated by peopleglut and infoglut within the social networks, then we simply become bored and return to our real lives. What's left to keep us engaged? There just isn't a very compelling reason.
The problem with the majority of today's social networks is that they are purposeless and irrelevant. They experience social and information entropy as they grow. They become irrelevant and noisy. As it goes, once the novelty of a social site wears off, the community or herd migrates. It started in 1999 with a little startup called Ryze. Ryze didn't have a lot to offer in the beginning. As soon as Friendster hit the radar the herd migrated. After finding Friendster to be appallingly slow and problematic they migrated to MySpace. Today the herd continues to migrate to Facebook, but they're looking... looking for new digs where they can move their social equity.
Purpose Driven Social Networking
The following is a list of types or classifications of community that when applied to social networking can create or drive purpose:
- Communities of Action- a community where its members have the possibility of bringing about change
- Communities of Circumstance- a community based on life experience or the situation a member is currently in
- Communities of Interest- a community where its members share a common interest or passion
- Communities of Position- a community built around life stages that provide individuals with the opportunity to build relationships with others during that particular phase of their lives
- Communities of Practice- a community made up of people who have common goals who interact to share experiences, lessons learned, new techniques, and information as they strive towards those goals
- Communities of Purpose- a community made up of people who are going through the same process or are trying to achieve a similar objective. For example a community of people working to make a difference in the world, where mission matters as much as the bottom line.
- Community of Inquiry- a community based on questioning, reasoning, connecting, deliberating, challenging, and developing problem-solving techniques, especially in the context of education
One social network in particular that stands as an example of purpose driven social networking is LinkedIn. A business-oriented social networking site, LinkedIn was launched from Silicon Valley in May 2003 by Reid Hoffman. Used for professional networking, LinkedIn generates a degree of continuous value as it not only keeps the member abreast of changes in their professional network, but in their professional market. Unlike Facebook and MySpace who have seen a dramatic drop in engagement, LinkedIn members stay engaged because it becomes an integral part of career exposure, promotion, and management. There's value in staying connected to and being exposed in your professional network. But still, LinkedIn falls short in the area of driving continuous value to the individual member. Every time I go to LinkedIn it's the same-old same-old. And although LinkedIn remains interesting to me, it's most likely because it started here in Silicon Valley and therefore (still) has relevance. My biggest fear is that it's going to go the route of so many other social sites and become convoluted as it continues to grow. My fear is that it will lose its relevance to me.
So why doesn't LinkedIn serve me better? Why doesn't LinkedIn try to keep itself relevant to me (beyond my network connections). I mean, it knows a LOT about me. It knows my entire career, it knows who I'm connected to, it knows how often I visit, it knows what I look at most often. So why doesn't it serve me continuously while I'm engaged in order to keep me coming back? Why doesn't it extend far beyond network connectivity to find interesting matches for me, in both information and people?
Relevance, Purpose, and that which matters most...
Social networks, in order to be successful and monetizable must drive continuous value to their stakeholders, through both relevance and purpose. There simply needs to be a reason to go there and spend your time on a daily basis, and it has to extend beyond fun and games. And we have to move beyond siloing (the creation of purpose or relevance through vertical and/or private label social networks attached to brands and already existing groups and organizations). Siloing does create a particular degree of community-based relevance, but in itself does not serve the individual's needs. In order to achieve the desired levels of engagement and participation v.Next Social Networks must understand the user and what and who is relevant to that individual user at any moment in time.
The question has been raised... "Is the party over?" The allure of social networking may be waning, but it's far from over. Social networking is in its infancy. The Web was originally designed to do one thing really well... 'connect people.' This point was driven home when my company launched Match.com back in the mid-1990's (we became very good at connecting people through the web). The time is ripe for the next innovator to steal the social networking market, like Google did back when they stole a supposedly saturated search engine market- and monetized it.
Social Networking v.Next must be focused on intelligence. It must continuously learn about and serve its membership, individually. It must be about things finding you rather than you finding them- about driving individual value, continuously. With so many social networking sites that end up as little more than vanity mouthpieces, it would be refreshing to see the emergence of those that serve real purpose and continuously drive individual value.