FUTURE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES
In Present Scenario, Social networking sites are becoming more and more popular throughout society. This new trend in how people from all walks of life socializes and familiarize themselves with new cultures and genres is a shift into how society will look in the future. Sites dedicated to this type of culture are continuously showing up throughout the internet.
The Social networking sites trend does not show any type of slowdown in the foreseeable future as many entrepreneurs are now using social media as a tool to market their business. Whether someone considers this paradigm shift a good thing or a bad thing, it does not reflect just how fast social networking is growing. Businesses and companies today are fully aware of the power of social networking and are putting resources behind it. This only enhances the future of this new genre and will continue to be a major force in any type of internet business strategy.
There are four components of "ubiquitous social networks":
1) Profiles
2) Relationships
3) Activities
4) Business models.
The ubiquitous social network isn't going to happen overnight - in fact, it's going to take five+ years to come to fruition. This is part of the continued evolution of open platforms, starting with walled garden services like Prodigy, CompuServe, and AOL that evolved into the major portal aggregators like Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL. This gave way to the "search era" where Google ET. Al. made the entire Internet easily accessible. Today's social networks are a throwback to those early closed platforms, and they will be opened up by new "entrants" into the social space - namely, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and AOL - who will leverage their deep, daily relationships with online audiences.
In the end, there are two essential things that have to present for this all to happen. The first is technology -- ubiquitous Internet access and the servers to enable real-time social graph access. Given the pace of technology development, It is very sure to happen. The second is much harder -- trust has to be present, between people, between social networks, marketers, and developers. This is what is going take a lot of time, effort, and patience, but in the end it will come. That's because people will press for it, demanding that sites and applications adhere to a Bill. Here are some recommendations of what a social network, marketer, or developer can do?
> Create linkages between services based on individually-controlled identity federation
> Complete on creating the most compelling social experience, not social graph lock-in
>Develop social applications that have meaning
>Integrate social networks into existing activities >Design business models that reflect the value created by people's social network 1) Universal identities.There's nothing more painful than having to maintain multiple profiles on different sites. Different people have many profiles on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. They also have profiles on social media services like del.icio.us, Twitter, and Digg. There are accounts on Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, and AOL, and shopping profiles and feedback on Amazon and eBay. And then there are multiple identities of the same person at his work, among friends, and at kids' school.
What complexity! But then again, there are many complex people around us!!! How to boil it down? First let's get at the real problem that is each person should try to maintain and control his/her identity, and when needed, to make them connected between services. And I think that the way to do this is a federated approach. In the future, there will likely be a few large centers for this federated identity, namely, the largest providers of email addresses like Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and AOL. They will need to be willing to accept and aggregate identities outside of their proprietary systems, for example, I could pair my Gmail address to my Yahoo! account. There is also a role for players like Plaxo who help aggregate and synthesize these various contact points. Watch carefully to see how organizations like the Data Portability Group facilitate the opening of identity and profile systems from currently closed services like Facebook and LinkedIn. Most likely they will participate because they realize that together they can grow the market faster and better. 2) A single social graph.Many people have a pretty extensive social graph on services like LinkedIn and Facebook, but they are far from complete. They still miss most of their extended family, their Forrester colleagues, and school friends. These are the people with whom people interact every day -some don't participate in social networks - and won't for the foreseeable future. But interaction is done with them with the help of emails, IMs, phone calls, and in person.
It's these simple, communication-based interactions that can be used to create relationship maps. This relationship map serves as the foundation for people's social graph, while the explicit "friends" that they denote form another valuable layer. Here's an illustration of what this implicit relationship maps could look like (this comes from my May 2004 report). Who's in the best position to do this? Again, major portal players like Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and AOL who have deep, daily interactions across multiple channels and in different topic areas. In the context, the idea of social graphs being "owned" by different social networks makes no sense. Yet, all of today's social networks build their business model and competitive advantage on having the largest, most complete social graph. The result: I have a close colleague who enjoys exploring all of the new social networks and "friends" me on all of them, figuring I'm a pretty good person to have in his new network. In a world with a single social graph, he would be able to import his existing personal, social graph into any new service, and immediately begin enjoying the new service without having to wait for his friends to catch up. And I would be spared the insanity of having to accept his umpteenth "friend" invitation! In a world of a single social graph, social networks will have to compete on the basis of creating the best experience for its members - not because it controls a unique social graph. 3) Social context for activities. The brilliance of Facebook Platform is that it greatly expanded what people could do on social networks. The problem is that what people do is still pretty limited. Take a look at the top applications on Facebook - they can be roughly grouped into >managing/comparing/interacting with friends in a general context; >self-expression (FunWall, Bumper Sticker); >games; >media preferences (iLike, Flikster). These are all fun and interesting, but they only begin to scratch the surface of what a person do every day. The biggest hole and opportunity, IMHO, is shopping. people research and buy things online every day, and with rare exception, these activities take place outside of Facebook. Facebook Beacon brings some of the information into News Feed, while a few shopping-oriented applications like StyleFeeder have potential. But by and large, social networks don't figure into people's shopping experiences. But it could, and in a very significant want. Take for example, a book review that Dave McClure wrote on the book "The Mystery Of Capital" within the Books iRead application on Facebook. I happened to run into the review last year, but it wasn't in context. Instead, I want to see reviews from my friends when I'm in the book buying process - on sites like Amazon.com and BN.com. It would mean a lot more for you to look at the Groundswell page on Amazon, and because you're sign-in with your email address, be able to see any review a friend has written about the book - even if it's on their personal blogs. That's the epitome of social networks being like air, when it's integrated into everything that you do. 4) A business model where social influence defines marketing value.Today's advertising models don't work on social networking sites - that's because simply targeting better on profile or social graph details is still the same old media model of CPM and CPC pricing. What's missing is marketing value based on how valuable the person is in the context of his influence. For example, Steve Rubel is a highly influential person because he is an authority on social media, the people in his social graph tend to interested in his views, and they in turn have a great deal of authority as well. The idea is that marketers want to reach highly influential people, and hopefully curry their endorsements. This has traditionally been the province of public relations, where they reach out to key influencers. But in the world of social networks, this is influence writ large and wide - every person has their own network of influence, and hence, their own personal CPM or value that they contribute to a social network. There are several start-ups as well as established agencies that are already looking at marketing, brokering, measuring, etc. social influence, so you can expect to hear more about this topic soon. But don't expect advertising spending to quickly embrace social influence - after all, the vast majority of ad budgets are spent by media buyers who still cleave to the tried and true reach and frequency, CPM models.
The upshot of this is that in a world of universal identity, a single social graph, and distributed social activities, social networks will have to compete on their ability to create an experience that can attract and retain the most valuable individuals. Just like search, the competition will be just a click away. Yet, despite the similarities and constant innovation, people are amazingly loyal to specific search engines.