Loading ...Great post and comments on prospects of vertical social networks. These are social networks that revolve around a specific interest groups, such as bikers, running enthusiasts, etc. The article argues that this is the direction in which social networks will evolve, and naturally, users will be part of multiple social networks. This leads to a need for aggregation and single-profile platforms for social networks.
Agree with most of the stuff thats said in here. One more addition — As this happens, I think the ability for social networks to easily digest content from over the web, and provide distribution/syndication widgets to sites all over the web will become critical. And this could be a key differentiator — how does a social network integrate with www? Today, some social networks have their own blogs, or provide rss readers to individual users, but I haven’t seen something that does a good job of integrating the web content well into the network. Similarly, I haven’t seen something compelling that lets you export out whatever is happening inside the network to rest of www.
Thats a very intresting comment you made “job of integrating the web content well into the network”. thats where widgets are coming into picture. Though I think there are ways of exporting content out of a network by way of rss readers-cum-publishers like Google Reader which has brought about something called “link blogs”.
Much lies ahead, I think in the field of importing community relevant content onto the network from the web. Semantic search agents etc might be something to look out for.
didn’t get the point. how different are vertical social network from user-groups/communities inside a general purpose social network.
I liked the concept of openid though. some meens of identifying same person on different websites , M$ tried this is commercial space using .NET passport.
I would watch for ning.com. Its shaping up to be a pretty powerful piece of software for creating social networks. Yes, seemless content aggregation isn’t there yet, but it should be soon coming given that the company just raised a whopping $44 million and one of the co-founders is none other than March Andreessen, a very smart guy. I am thinking netvibes+ning could well be a step in the direction you point out here.
Hi,
I think thats a point well made.. having been able to import/export data out of the social nets.. we are trying to incorporate something like this on Linkedzone… but we want to be sure about the kind of functionality we want to give.. it has to be completely aligned with the social net otherwise its gonna just end up as a waste of time and energy…
Yes.Next big thing is social netwok integeration.And how can I say ITS next big thing ? Becoz internet gaint GOOGLE is working on it
wicth project name social stream.
http://www.techcrunch.com/page/5/
Vertical networks are fantastic-o-fied, but if “integrators” will be the place to store specific data then a) the advertisers will go there and b) the vertical networks will therefore get ticked off and either go out of business or otherwise.
So, social networks will simply not store valuable information at the aggregator/integrator end. A vertical site on parenting may have information on a user’s children, birthdates, hospitals they recommend, stuff they have been interested in etc. which are, in my opinion, never going to get shared over to the integrator. Useful, however, for the products or services that people with babies need, such as shops with a play-pen, hotels with baby seats and the like.
The game therefore will have to move to the individual network. What may be of a bigger interest is an Adsense-like-ad-delivery system which allows sites that can demographically profile their users effectively to deliver relevant content. For instance if I am able to determine a high income individual in Bangalore, an ad for the Sunday Brunch at the Leela Palace (over 1500 a pop) will probably make more sense. (at a 10% discount, the rich love their discounts) But each site has its own way of demographic segmentation; so there needs to be a common interface so advertisers can determine what kinds of such segmentation exist, and then to target them. Adsense++.
The integrators will make as much money as RSS. Perhaps a little from the first time advertisers who will soon understand the value is in the wine, not the bottle.