As someone who deals with corporations deploying social media to connect with customers, I've been watching and taking note of all the inventory out there, as sometimes I'm asked to suggest some software to clients. There's a tremendous amount of options available to any company that wants to expand their web strategy to create collaborative and two-way websites. There's some VCs out there that think there's too many players and not enough innovation.
Web Software Taxonomy
I've taken tally of one niche of Web Software (Order) Social Software (Family), they are broken into groups (Genus), if you click on any of those links, you'll see the specific company (Species)
Inventory of Social Media Software Industry:
Wikis
Over 60 different types of wiki software available
You can compare features
White Label (you can rebrand) Social Networking Software
I have a list of over 40 companies, it started with 8, and it continues to grow
Blogging Software
29 flavors of software available
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_software
Video Platforms
There are over 20 Online Video platforms. See my rant yesterday.
Podcast Directories
Over 140 directories listed
Internet Forum Software packages
Over 50 software packages are availableInstant Messaging
Nearly 20 different clients (many don't work together) availableSocial Bookmarking
Over 25 services listed.
Online Data Storage
I've started a list of enterprise vendors
hundreds of startups that offer online data storage as primary or secondary feature.Online Photo Sharing
Over 100 services available (use the engine, and 'show me all')
I remember the first internet boom
I was part of the first internet boom. I was at Exodus Communications (I still remember, and document it) which hosted many web startups in our data centers. Some of our clients were pets.com, and some other startups with ridiculous names (at the time) like "Google" and "Yahoo". I remember an excess of startups entering the market, and then the shakeout occurred in 2000-2003, only the strong and unique survived. I suspect we're getting close to that point where the shakeout will start to occur, hopefully, it won't be another catastrophic event like Sept 2001.
Analysis:
There are two stances I could take here:
1) Software is starting to Niche for different groups
or
2) There a excess of social software available.
I'm leaning towards the latter, how about you?
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