1. Zack Lynch on March 3, 2005 02:13 PM writes...

You nailed it. Pete nailed it. Thanks for clarifying this for me too.

2. Shannon Clark on March 3, 2005 03:28 PM writes...

There may also be some (though it is debateable yet if any have shown up) networks where you get a direct value from being in them - and your addition also adds value to everyone else in the network.

Spoke and LinkedIn were two cases that attempted this to a degree.

Plaxo is another, very debateable one - where by joining (and spamming some argue) you get a very real value of updated contacts information from all the people who may have new/changed/modified information. A real value but a poor implementation perhaps.

Evite I find myself getting great value from the more I use it to organize events - though as of yet the signal to noice ratio is a bit high, so it is far from perfect (I also don't quite get why they delete any information - why not let you save not just all events you have organized, but all the ones you have attended in the past - and leverage those as you plan future events - i.e. include people who said they would like to be included in future events - perhaps drop people who indicated future conflicts with the event etc)

Shannon

3. jeff angus on March 3, 2005 05:05 PM writes...

YES, completely.

In a way your SNA observation is a practical extension about everything of value on the net. Everything, down to the lowliest Wartburg coupe, is good at *something*, and most often what it's good at is the prime purpose of what it was invented for.

The net was invented and deployed to be a dynamic, real-time reference section, not a retail storefront or superstore or entertainment portal (though entertainment could be a side benefit). So it's no surprise what it's best at is as a dynamic real-time reference section.

One can make money off that concept, but to work very well, it's not about making money, it's about doing something that supports the basic design and is therefore supported by it. There are a few exceptions, not many, but they tend to be things where scale alone was the limiting factor (eBay or Half.com being the rummage sale writ global). But even there, a lot of the delivered value is not the movement of cash and the plaque of consumer goods, but in the way they inform the real face-to-face market for price and availability.

4. Craig Calle on March 3, 2005 08:28 PM writes...

Not surprised that the SNAs you mentioned turn you off. They're little more than Friendster asserted as a business app, sans pictures. Tracing linkages can be entertaining (like the Kevin Bacon game) and give someone a plausible reason to invite a stranger for a date, but the process doesn't necessarily lead to a consistently actionable business networking experience.

Part of the problem is a declining signal-to-noise ratio due to the method of inclusion, chain length and vitality, and a flawed trust mechanism.

Most are introduced to SNAs through virtual chain letter solicitations. The viral growth they depend on is making the relationship capital management (RCM) industry sick. You have a problem when you get an invitation from someone you don't know to join their "trusted network." If that weren't enough, now we're all trying to figure out the proper etiquette for declining invitations from those we know but with whom we'd prefer not to be linked to. Life's too short.

SNAs require you to bet that a friend of a friend isn't really an enemy, or at least indifferent to your cause. Business people rarely are comfortable with that proposition.

They also put undue weight on an evaluation of one's Profile. As SNAs attempt to grow beyond the techo-savvy early adopters, they confront a world that is, for the sake of privacy preservation, uneasy about enduring public displays of reflection.

You no doubt have other reasons to be turned off by SNAs. Same here. Maybe you don't really need to leverage your relationship capital to get things done, or have a need to create more of it, but lots of people do. The better mouse trap involves one-to-one networking with a discrete and comprehensive way to establish trust in an online environment. I built COMMON.net to do just that. Follow-on products, like our mobile application, will reinforce the community experience and help this emerging RCM industry find a place in the market.

5. p on March 3, 2005 11:25 PM writes...

Interesting but way too simplistic. We know from the pioneers of network theory the concept of "the strength of weak ties and the weakness of strong ties." Weak ties have great value we just don't know when they will be useded. Focusing on immediate production is focusing just on what you called widgets. You have your logic backwards. Managing weak ties is not an active process. To manage them like widgets is to miss understand their value.

6. Julian Bond on March 4, 2005 05:29 AM writes...

I wonder where you put online social networks that support group forming. I'm thinking here particularly places like Ecademy and Tribes where a big part of the functionality is "Clubs". Orkut also seems to have a thriving "Club" scene. You can extend this thinking to the thousands of phpBB based forums that focus on a particular niche topic. If you are active within a club on an OSN, then you are creating something with the others in the form of discussion.

7. Julian Bond on March 4, 2005 05:35 AM writes...

To add one further thought here. I think all you're really saying is that the pure networking part ("Are you my friend", "Please introduce me to") is boring and doesn't work. This is a problem I had with LinkedIn, Spoke, Plaxo, Huminity from the start. I'd go to their sites and even after building a big network, I couldn't work out what I was supposed to do next.

And a final side note. We all use 3 degree links. "Please introduce me to your friend." We sometimes use 4 degree links. "Do you know anyone who knows X". We never use 5 degree links, because the middle person has no skin in the game. They don't know the initiator and they don't know the final target. This seems to me to be a deal breaker for the LinkedIn model.

8. Barry Ritholtz on March 6, 2005 08:09 PM writes...

I refuse to participate in any and all of these sites, and with good reason.

Why?

I think its safe to say that the marketplace does not have space for 9 (nine!) of these companies. And I probably missed some. Eventually, there may be some consolidation -we see it starting already. That means two things: One, I have no idea where my personal data and address book will ultimately end up, what company or person; and B) the liklihood is that at least 2 but more likely 3 and probably 4 and maybe even 5, and quite possibly 6 of these firms will go belly up, the long dirt nap, buy a farm.

And when that happens, the VC's investments will be worth zero, nada, zilch, and they will seek to recoup something, anything, even just pennies on the dollar (pretty please?). And then the vultures will come in: strip the offices down to the bare walls, sell everything thats not moving for pennies on the dollar. Aeron Chairs (ha!), PCs, desks, wall cabinets, EVERYTHING.

And when that happens, when the Bankruptcy Judge brings down the gavel, the most valuable asset these companies have -- all of my personal info, plus all of your contact info, plus every person you know's name/number/email address -- will be sold to the highest bidder. They may promise that they will protect your data, but I simply do not believe they can control anything post banckruptcy. The contracts are ignored.

And I'll bet you dollars to donuts that the buyer will be a bigtime spammer. That's right: I bet that some of the data that you have so willingly forked over to these new social networking firms will be sold to a spammer. That's why I suggest you update your own damn address book.

No thanks . . .

9. Chris DeVore on March 17, 2005 06:36 PM writes...

Sorry to come late to the party on this thread, but I couldn't agree more with the 'where's the beef' opinion of connection-oriented SNAs.

I've been working for the past year on an idea that - I hope - bolsters Stowe's case. It's called Judy's Book, and it's neither an SNA nor a community site, but something inbetween. For want of a ready moniker, my partner and I are describing it as a 'local word of mouth community for families'.

Our idealized goal is to help our members harness the power of personal relationships, both as an engine for information sharing (in the form of facilitated questions and answers between connected members), *and* as a filter for information retrieval -- weeding out commercial content and assigning a personalized relevance score to sincere content, based on your relationship (direct or indirect) to the author. Over time, participating members will collaboratively create a rich store of local recommendations, advice and opinion that they can easily refer to whenever they need an answer. To combat the 'needle-in-a-haystack' problem, members can combine 'filters' of relationship, geography and category to quickly retrive only the information that's relevant to them.

We know we have a long road to travel to turn this idea into a living, breathing community, which is where you - my fellow Get Real readers - come in. Given the level of both knowledge and passion on this subject among all of you, I'd welcome an unvarnished assessment of Judy's Book from anyone who has the time and inclination to come kick the tires. (It's a free service -- we're operating on the unproven hypothesis that local advertisers will eventually be willing to sponsor the site in order to amplify the customer word of mouth available there).

Thanks in advance to any takers (even an offer to dance on our graves from Barry (above) would be a welcome echo from the void...)