Open standards and "social networking with a point"
Another day, another social network launches. Voxswap arrived earlier this week - and in a bid to create what its co-founders call ‘social networking with a point,’ the site allows users to set up profiles and state which languages they are learning.
“I am convinced social networking is here to stay but it needs to have a point. There’s no benefit in creating long lists of so-called friends and business contacts you never actually meet or contact,” says co-founder Sean Hargreaves.
Couldn't agree more, actually.
Hargreaves continues: “That’s why I decided to launch a social network site that will help people learn or practise a foreign language so everybody benefits. I couldn’t find the site I was looking for, so I decided to build it.”
But is that enough of a pull? Is learning a language really going beyond contact building and taking the user into true connectivity and interaction?
Users will want open standards, access to a combination of systems and platforms - access, inevitably, to everyone at any time. So, how will social networks develop in the long-term to provide access to information? A number of people that replied to my earlier blog posting about social networks being rubbish (see Further reading, below) suggested the best way forward is sectoral.
Ian Hendry, for example, believes networks will become vertical, appealing to specific interests or demographics - one for friends, one for family, one for professional contacts: "All that remains to be seen is which sites get the traffic," he says.
Maybe. But how will such vertical networks interact? As ever, the flow of information and the need for open standards is crucial.
- Facebook? LinkedIn? Social networking is rubbish
- Facebook provides a great business opportunity
- Turn email off to stop unhelpful chatter
- $15bn Facebook valuation masks the real deal
- Web 2.0 technologies = five hours of depression
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Social network resources with a point?
- http://www.voxswap.com - Allows users to set up profiles, stating which languages they speak and which they are practising
- http://www.ning.com - Ning offers customisable social networking features to meet each group's specific needs
- http://findasocialnetwork.com/search.php - A dedicated search engine to help find and promote social networks; though I had a quick play and found the results, well, disappointing. Still, feedback from the site says: "We're in very early stages at the moment and still building our database, so the results will be far from exhaustive." Might be worth giving the search engine more patience, then...
- http://www.linkedintelligence.com/smart-ways-to-use-linkedin - Just a glorified contact manager? Offers more than a 100 ways to make the most of LinkedIn
- http://www.wecando.biz - Combines business networking and internet searching in an attempt to provide qualified leads
Hi,
Thank you for taking a look at our search engine. We're sad to hear that you found your experience disappointing, but please keep in mind that we're in very early stages at the moment and still building our database, so the results will be far from exhaustive!
Our objective at the moment is for niche social network owners and operators to submit their sites to us so that we may offer more results to our users while giving these social networks an avenue to promote themselves and be found.
Everyone is welcome to submit their site. Thank you.
Posted by: Find A Social Network | Saturday, 19 January 2008 at 03:45 AM
The idea of social networks going vertical is on the one hand inevitable, as a natural progression, it on the other hand probably the point that will be the making of social networks...
Posted by: Wayne Smallman | Sunday, 20 January 2008 at 02:25 PM
Find A Social Network - And thank you for coming back on my criticism. I put in quite a range of search options and came back with limited results. But your comment provides an explanation. Hopefully my next search will be more impressive, eh? I'll modify the list of social networking resources to add your feedback.
Wayne - Do you have other examples of how social networking is becoming more vertical? Thanks for the stumbleupon post, by the way - very kind of you.
Posted by: Mark Samuels | Monday, 21 January 2008 at 10:15 AM
Just a reminder. IT staff are not machines. If I did not have 20 mins time out a day on Facebook, I would ohterwise chat to the cleaner or go to the coffee machine in the TV room or text my mates.
Posted by: Digit Al | Thursday, 24 January 2008 at 12:15 PM
Digit Al - Fair enough point, but how does your company feel about 20 minutes on Facebook? Do they see it as 'appropriate' downtime...??
Posted by: Mark Samuels | Monday, 28 January 2008 at 03:57 PM
Hello,
A few more sites have been added to our database since last time. A few thousand actually! You should now get a range of results for most search terms. Please take another look and give us your opinion.
Thnaks!
Posted by: Find A Social Network | Saturday, 01 March 2008 at 03:08 AM
Find a Social Network - Thanks for the update - impressive stuff. I did a couple of searches and found the following: 63 social networks that mention 'football'; 4 social networks that mention 'Aston Villa; and 0 social networks that mention CIO.
Which suggests a couple of things, I think. First, my searches were weighted towards Aston Villa Football Club...
Second, CIOs - if your results can be used as a rule of thumb - are not being covered by existing social networks. I wonder why?
Posted by: Mark Samuels | Tuesday, 04 March 2008 at 03:40 PM
I'd be interested to hear what the guys at FindASocialNetwork have planned next. It's great being able to find specialist networks through their site, but each will require its own authentication. Maybe an opportunity exists to provide single sign-on to the sites linked, and use the local authentication account to allow visitors to save details of their favourite networks?
Posted by: Ian Hendry | Thursday, 06 March 2008 at 11:14 AM