Complexity and Social Networks Blog

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28 February 2007

WYSIYN - Build your own social networks

It was only a matter of time. Remember those years when the creation websites was only something for programmers? But then came WYSIWYG HTML editors and thereafter blogs and Wikis, which allowed almost anyone to participate in the web. However, while many of us joined online social networks, the creation was the domain of software developers of the respective platforms (i.e. MySpace, Xing, ASW , facebook to name a few). This is about to change with "what you see is your network" (WYSIYN) Web20 solutions such as ning. There are other companies like coghead or teqlo which allow users to take advantage of other web technologies in an intuitive way. Ning, of course in endless beta, offers the usual features (see a video walkthrough and another review) most of us are now used to from the existing online SN platforms: public/private network, member profiles, forums, blogs, picture and video sharing.

This development raises an interesting set of questions. More on the business side: Will the private online social networks (OSN) canibalize the business models of the existing "professional" platforms? Will this lead to an uncontrollable rise of thousands of OSN that are short lived (Sustainability of OSN was adressed earlier by Ines) just like many blogs (Managing an online community costs certainly more time and effort than running a blog). There are still millions of people who are not using online social networks at all. On the other hand, should these very specific communities be of interest to marketing, advertising, campaign managers anytime soon? Will the majority of individuals create the OSN to manage their offline social networks or would they rather create these OSN around an area of personal interest. The latter might support the notion that we will see the emergence of short-term OSN in the near future. I am also wondering what kind of innovative ways these individuals might develop to market their OSN and keep it alive facing competition from big players, the usual time constraints of daily life and decreasing motivation to participate.

More on the network side. Yesterday Thomas underlined the importance of having critical mass of users in online communities which consists of members that can be grouped around certain roles/ characteristics. What is the maximum number of OSN people are willing to connect? Would Meta-SN Plattforms be next once user demand spurred by their multiple memberships in OSN force even the big platforms to agree on some joint standards (i.e. OpenID) to be more user friendly, thus making it easier to manage multiple online identities and prevent entering redundant information over and over. The big players are already opening up to third-party providers according to a recent article in BusinessWeek.

Finally, would the readership of this blog be intersted in an OSN of "Social Network and Complexity Researchers" instead of our current attempt of creating a Global Social Networks Researchers Mash-up which so far only attracted 43 individuals to join.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at February 28, 2007 12:00 AM

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