Unit Structures Fred Stutzman’s thoughts about information, social networks and technology.

Social Networking in 2007

Over the past few days, I’ve enjoyed reading lists of tech predictions for 2007. Some favorites include Mashable, R/W Web, Ypulse, Web+, Lynetter’s predictions and Jason Caplain’s series of VC Predictions. A bunch of these lists include predictions about how social networking will change in 2007. Some I agreed with, some I didn’t – so I figured I’d contribute my own thoughts on what 2007 might hold for the SNS space.

First and foremost, 2007 will be a shakeout year in the SNS space. There are simply too many upstart social networks competing for the same audience. The most important asset a social network can posses is community, and communities are pooling in the premier social networks (Myspace, Bebo, Facebook). This pooling of community, or network effect, drives lock-in and gives the users less incentives to explore new social networks. As a result, a number of companies are going to take it on the nose.

Of course, in any market, companies enter and exit regularly. With the Open Source stack, and languages like Ruby or PHP, almost anyone could create a SNS site. Simply because there is a shakeout doesn’t mean the market is slowing – it simply means people are demonstrating their preferences. And more often than not, people choose community over features or niche-orientation. With this in mind, let’s look at what 2007 holds for SNS.

1. The rich will get richer
Expect to see growth in the premier social network sites. Sites like Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 and Xanga will leverage their existing communities to drive increases in membership in 2007. Put quite simply, people want to be where other people are. To that extent, the networks contained in these sites will serve to draw others in. Of course, Myspace will still continue to growin 2007, but I’d fully expect these A-list-but-not-Myspace SNS to see strong growth across 2007. It seems that the average SNS user can actively use about 2 profiles. Since Myspace has a lock on one of these, the market is fighting for the other.

2. The niche play isn’t enough
A lot of new SNS entrants are niche-oriented. Unfortunately, simply being a niche play isn’t enough to guarantee success. We can look at these niche social networks as the modern equivalent of the bulletin board community. Research any specialty interest around the web, and you’re likely to find a mailing list or forum or poorly designed website that serves the needs of this community. The SNS that wishes to come in and replace this forum or website lacks content, community and search placement. It will be a very tough slog.

Therefore, how do you successfully niche orient a SNS? First, you can find an underserved market, or a market that didn’t really exist previously without the social dimension. One I can think of is Mychurch.org, a SNS for places of worship. You also need to seed content – if you want to build a SNS for patients or new parents, for example, ,you need to have more than just community – you need to have great content that incentivizes people to come back. Without the content dimension, a good number of niche social networks will fail.

3. Established communities will go social
Ebay. Amazon. Wikipedia. Motley Fool. New York Times. What do these sites all have in common? They are large content sites with enormous communities. As the web goes social, individuals in these communities want to meet, learn about, learn from or even date fellow members of these communities. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense for established communities to introduce social and profile aspects to their communities. First, it is a move that will get tech pundits talking, and the cluetrain folks applauding, as it embraces social and conversational aspects of community. Second, it will increase engagement between customers, therefore increasing the amount of time people will spend on the site. It also increases the amount of social capital individuals invest into their relationship with the content site, ultimately making individuals ambassadors of the brands into which they invest time.

4. Community will emerge around shared experience
YouTube is a shared experience. You send me a video, I watch it, we talk about it. Millions of people of all ages do this every day. The social web is one of shared experiences, and video is a prime example of this phenomenon. Over the next year, we’ll find lots of new ways to have shared social experiences, and there’s a good chance that rich media will be centric to these experiences.

5. OpenID will bridge social networks.
Walled-garden community helps the rich get richer in the SNS space (see prediction one). However, as SNS becomes more integrated into our social lives, the masses are going to expect interoperability. OpenID stands as the natural, simple solution to interoperability between social networks. We can expect to see some upstart players adopt OpenID in 2007, but it also makes sense for Myspace or Facebook to adopt OpenID. Rather than people leaving Myspace or Facebook to try new SNS, they could simply use OpenID to log into these new sites with their pre-existing profiles. It makes a lot of sense, and it is a strong business move. The profile is the center of the social universe – social network designers should adopt OpenID so they can answer their customers needs.

Ok, these are my major predictions for 2007 – now how about my contrarian predictions?

1) Social networking will not go mobile in 2007.
Sure, lots of vendors are going to offer SNS on mobiles in 2007, but it won’t catch on to become a major force. With data plans and handsets as they are, mobile use just doesn’t match our use expectations of SNS. SNS is about browsing – and until mobiles let people richly and cost-effectively browse, our phones are going to remain glorified address books.

2) We can only support one or two profiles.
We may log on to lots of sites, but we can really only actively keep personas on one or two sites. We’re not entering a future where everyone has five social networking profiles. It just isn’t gonna happen. And that’s going to hurt the industry.

3) Social networking must get less complicated, not more complicated.
Features are a way SNS differentiate themselves from the competition. How many times have I heard that a new SNS has all the features of Myspace “plus extra features.” Unfortunately, the market is not choosing SNS based on features. SNS designers should simplify, make their sites faster, remove walls and barriers, and open up as much as possible.

4) Social networking might not exist in 2008.
Social networks are the new portals. In 2008 we may look at an upstart social network the way we look at a search company trying to take on Google. 2007 is going to be the year the big SNS players portalize in a major way, perhaps to the extent that we may not even recognize the Facebook or Myspace of 2006 in 2008.

Agree or disagree, I think that 2007 is going to be the year of shakeout and transformation for social networking. However, there’s still a lot of money to be made in the area by new entrants. We’ll conclude these predictions by looking at some of these areas. What are the social networking areas currently being missed by the market?

1) The post-collegiate job market.
I like LinkedIn, but the site completely misses the *huge* market of post-collegiate employment. Why? These people don’t really have “professional network” – they may not have much experience but they are going to get high-paying jobs from many top companies. Why is there not a social network that serves to bridge employers and potential employees in this vital market? Employers want to know who they are hiring, and employees want to know what kind of people the companies hire. By introducing this transparency, everyone in this huge market segment benefits. Young people need their own “professional network” – one that is less stodgy than LinkedIn. Idealist.org is a good start.

2) Meta-social networks.
Youtube was largely successful because it allowed its content to be embedded in Myspace. Mybloglog is successful among the A-list of bloggers for the same reason. There’s a whole lot of content areas that can be managed by meta-social networks, that can be embedded in the “main” profiles of individuals. I’ve spoken to a few entrepreneurs that are creating social networks around charitable giving – this is the perfect type of information that can be meta-embedded in blogs and main social network profiles.

3) Real-life connections.
The social web is about bridging offline to online connections. Upstart social networks that effectively move offline conversation online will find success in 2007.

In 2007, designers of social networks face significant challenges. The top players – Myspace, Bebo, Facebook – are becoming as difficult to dethrone as Google. Designing a SNS is designing a community – something very difficult because most community comes from the bottom up, not the top down. Social network designers must think about the needs their site will answer, what privileges use of the SNS will grant – and most importantly, how their site will be marketed virally. What will get people talking about your SNS at parties in 2007?

There’s still a lot of area to make inroads into this space – just as in search we had Altavista and Excite and Dogpile (remember when they were the major players?), there may be a Google of SNS still lurking out there. Although I’m skeptical about that, what fun would it be if there wasn’t competition and new ideas coming into the market? 2007 is going to be the year social networks begin portalizing and mainstream further; I expect it is going to be an interesting year.

Fred,

This is a really good post.

I think you lay out a lot of ideas and challenges where we need to focus when it comes to online social networking.

Niche SNS have a few more years to prove they have wsorking non-profit model. It’s interesting. A lot of people on the application and implementation side of things, especially among non-profits (my current working domain), are still learning about how models like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, can work for their causes. My belief, really a hunch, has been that SNS are more conducive to the non-profit community (particularly professional associations) more than private business… inherent SNS value is an investment for later return.. generally speaking, so far it does not seem to be very good at a direct return (e.g. ad dollars). Adoption occurs more slowly within non-profits, so I think there is still time for SNS to penetrate that “industry”… and perhaps establish a kind of acceptance and normative value.

I do agree that the Mega Sites will begin to solidify market share in the business sector. And OpenID may play a significant factor. I believe you’re right when you suggest this is where we are headed as people compile multuple profiles across multiple sites.

A need to simplify should eventually reach critical mass.. especially as the Facebook generation transitions into the post-collegiate stages (as you point out). I think this cohort, currently about age range 20-24, will be an important influence when it comes to evolving online SNS development, and how SNS can support offline goals and activities.

Happy New Year to you and your blog community.

Keep up the great work in 2007.

- Paul

I agree with a lot of what you argue but let me play contrarian for a moment. I think that there’s a lot of potential to go mobile OUTSIDE OF THE US. I don’t think that it will look like or feel like the web version but it will be SNS all the same (with “friends” and “comments” and weirdo forms of profiles that allow for some form of “presence”).

(I don’t have the same faith in interoperability that you have, but you know that. I’d love your thoughts on my recent post.)

But overall, i totally agree that it’s a shakeout year. (And i intend to run to cover writing a dissertation.)

Hi,

Great post…

Agree with zephoria that social networking on mobile could be a huge potential in markets where the internet isn’t as wide spread as the US and the mobile penetration is much larger. But how to make it simple enough and still appealing for mobile users? It may not be social networking exactly as we know it from the web. It could be oriented around the phone’s internal phone book for example and the communication log in the phone, which opens up some really interesting possibilities.

And is it possible to make the web based social networks interoperable with a ‘lesser’ mobile social network or are they so different that there would be no point.

- Lars

Paul, danah – Thanks for the great comments. Paul, I agree that niches get time to prove themselves. Community will form organically in some niches, but the success may not be as apparent or as newsworthy as prior SNS stories.

danah – The mean barrier I see to mobile are handsets and data plans. Anywhere where the phones are media-rich and data plans cheap, I can see mobile social networking taking off. Mix in things like location-awareness and you’ve got a really killer combo. However, with data plans and handsets where they are in 2007, I don’t see mobile taking off in the 2007 space. Most college students carry Razr’s or the like…good phones but not wifi, etc. So I think that’s the roadblock here….not much else.

Now, with regards to profile interop, I’m not really talking about profile transferrability – which I think is sort of what you’re talking about with re-created ephemeral profiles. I guess in my vision a single profile is placeful, and then you use that profile to log in to other SNS. (i.e. My facebook identity would show up as a friend to your myspace account) So it is a slightly different vision. I agree it is way down the pipeline…it would take a lot of industry work to get it going. However, I do think 2007 is goinig to be a big year for OpenId so who knows ;)

Regarding shakeout…there are just too many fly-by-night social nets out there..I think a lot of one and two employee shops are going to close up in the shakeout. The bigger ones I think are insulated. But if you don’t have lots of users…perhaps there may be some mergers too!

Hey Fred,

Happy New Year to you. Great post, very succinct. Quick question: Functionality/ productivity, interoperability, great branding… what else goes into the recipe for a web 2.0 SNS start-up to give the best chance of success?

This morning I’ve been talking with colleagues about how online functionality meets online identity (as we have, need and potentially gain benefit from each). You mention that niche SNS sites will need content. I presume this will initially mean RSS feeds to external sources or centrally created content (e-zine as part of the offering, with journalistic team as part of the SNS staff)?

But how about functionality? For example, integrating a full IMAP email service akin to the wonderful. Mac into the SNS-centred experience. This moves the technology to where I predict it’s going – collaborative networks. You say that features aren’t important but what do you mean by that?

“I’ve spoken to a few entrepreneurs that are creating social networks around charitable giving – this is the perfect type of information that can be meta-embedded in blogs and main social network profiles.” Can you tell me more about this, as this is what I’m working on (developing niche SNS to facilitate philanthropy, integrating productivity features)?

@Paul Diperna – completely agree and am also working on this. My interest is in using SNS technology to enable people to create and share their online identities (as individuals, groups or companies etc), increase productivity and affect real change in the world.

Thanks, James

Great post. I think you do a good job of outlining the positive plus the challenges for 2007. I do agree that it’s just a matter of time before the big players start adding social aspects to their user base. The question is if the management at said companies is too clueless to get it done – or they would rather just buy an existing web 2.0 company to get the technology.

I also think your mention of “meta social” is a hot area as with MyBlogLog. There are a lot of people who have their own sites that want to add community and share viewers with others but don’t want to hand all their content over to the social sites. Stuff like MyBlogLog or other social widgets are pretty neat ways to find a medium. Lots of opportunity there.

“Why is there not a social network that serves to bridge employers and potential employees in this vital market? Employers want to know who they are hiring, and employees want to know what kind of people the companies hire. By introducing this transparency, everyone in this huge market segment benefits.”

Hi Fred, have you looked at doostang.com?

Re: Doostang, I’ve seen it a few times. But with that name and the look/feel of the front page, the project doesn’t look quite ready for prime time, at least on the level I’m envisioning.

Really great post… Totally agree on the LinkedIn, “Jr.”/Idealist for every industry concept… It’s amazing to me how badly students and recent alumni miss the ball when it comes to online management of their careers. I don’t know if career is just a bad word and they don’t want to think about it, but you’d think that a generation so tech savvy would be really interested in connecting via more professional social networks to share jobs, professional interests, etc… perhaps its just never been taught be career planning and they think the web is just for recreational socializing? I just don’t get it. Thanks… I needed a few things to blog about today.

As community tends to emerge around shared experience, I suspect that the sites being experienced are not best suited to indentify, cultivate, and leverage the blooming community. Your example of YouTube is terrific. YouTube’s not designed to encourage socialization; it’s design to make you watch and contribute as many videos as possible. SN features were built at YouTube to encourage more video discovery and distribution.

It seems like there’s an opportunity for a meta social network to insert theirselves into shared experience sites (like YouTube) and encourage social interaction via widgets.

MyBlogLog is a great start, but I imagine blog widgets that direct a user to a different portal doesn’t go far enough. More interaction in-widget is necessary.

> The mean barrier I see to mobile are handsets and data plans.

What a great post. I have little experience -and low expectations- in this space but reading your comments was such an eye opener. Thank you.

I think there are other considerations when it comes to the mobile journey in the US

- tight grip from carriers
- lack of iddle time

Bear in mind I didn’t say “spare” time but iddle. Some of the greatest mobile successes in Asia ocurr due to lengthy commutes on public transportation and that is just one case. If you study the gambling markets as well as the adult markets expansions into mobile you could see what kind of obstacles same industries faced in the US.

According to your post, both myspace and youtube are aberrations as they don’t really serve a community, at least, in the narrowest of senses. There may be other motivations at work, some not so openly embraced -as myspace served as a platform for the adult industry far and wide-. So many of this webspaces are governed by the self interest of the people joining them, each of which wants to extract some kind of juice for their own benefit. Hardly the definition of a community…

What a gem if one could find -and define- an offline group of people who are connected in some way without even knowing it and crystalizing that sentiment in a social network. Professionals?

My bet is:

* Age segmentation will trigger the “fun” social_networking market to merge with the fun_online_dating market, mainly for 13-25 years old persons (teenagers). Many sites are only cheap channels for deliver ads, i.e. infomercial-advertainment companies on the web!

* the “quality” social_networking market will overlap with the quality_online_dating market: mainly for 26-and more years old persons. Clients will pay for quality contacts (compatible real persons) and to avoid being hurt in their feelings by other persons. They know the difference between real friends from casual acquaintances.

* business_networking will peak and decay.

Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com

I definitely agree that existing websites should go social, but I’m just not sure that they have the werewithal to do so. Some of them do – I’d say WaPo rather than NYT, given the general approach to online strategy thus far. It’s a process that might start in 2007 – even probably will start – but I’m not sure if enough people in established non-SNS contexts really “get” social software, yet.

Heck, I’m not sure that I get it, for whatever that’s worth.

I think one thing that you’re not hitting on, here is the user experience side. Given the spate of recent crossings-over of SNS context to meatspace consequences (e.g., the Peyton Strickland tragedy) and some initial evidence that users don’t fully realize the extent of their exposure via SNS profiles, 2007 might be the year when users really start drawing back from full exposure and/or more fully explicating their ideas of who should know what about them.

Hey thanks for linking to my predictions on web+. I think you’re spot on about the rich getting richer. Some of these established communities are already social, its just not as readily apparent. Amazon was web2.0 before that was even a trendy term (user reviews)

Nice post. Mobile social networking in Japan is more popular than web-based. Its specific feature is that it is closely linked to real-life. Here is the latest example of niche mobile SNS, targeting young moms:
http://analytica1st.com/analytica1st/2007/01/mobile-social-network-mamasa-targets-at.html

Hi Fred, interesting article which I have referenced from my blog (www.dpingram.com). Hope you dont mind. D.

I really love the ideas of your social networking in 2007. I will take with what you have to say about social networking
sites and use that information to my advantage.

Interesting article about social networking sites, would be interested to see at the end of 2007, what’s came true and what didn’t.

One social network that i know will be around will be FanBox.com.