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Tech Trends IV - What's the Next Step in Social Networking
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Monday, February 26, 2007
As February comes to a close, I think it warrants looking at what is ahead for Web 2.0 and what I think AIM's and AOL's role might be.
I believe that the next phase in community and social networking will follow a path opposite of the organizing principals at the dawn of man. When humans first walked the Earth they lived in individual family units, eventually families came together to form villages, towns and then cities. In building communities on the net, we are doing the opposite. It seems most people have organized themselves in a few distinct communities, SecondLife, Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, etc. While each of these services particularly Facebook gives its users some granularity in being able to join groups of interest, at the end of the day you are just a member of a giant community. The next step in this evolution is to actually go backwards from the way we organized. For an extreme example, maybe we will see "countries or states set up in SecondLife where if you are interested in cats, the Redskins, and suffer from popcorn addiction there will be a "town" for you, where you have to slowly integrate into the town to become a "townie". Communities will evolve from millions into hundreds. Now you may be thinking, "wait, how can this be a business, web 2.0 is all about eye balls?" I agree it is all about eye balls, but I think advertisers will be looking at the value of those eye balls. If I am The Popcorn Factory, I know I will have 'n' number of users in the Redskins, popcorn addict community, and those ads will be invaluable to them.
Step 1 - build targeted communities
Step 2 - sell ad space to companies that will be uber targeted in the niche networks
Step 3 - profit --- Well maybe
We are seeing some of these small factions develop on the internet right now, for example, if you are into airline miles, you would join FlyerTalk to learn the secrets of earning extra miles. It is organized by airline, but that is as far as it goes. If I am interested in tips from a fellow United Airlines DC flyer, there is really no way to drill down to that level. Even then, there would be thousands of people in that community. Could I drill down more? I should be able to.
I see one social network missing and that is health care. I promiss I am not a shill for Revolution Health Care, but what Steve Case (full discloser former CEO of AOL, now CEO of Revolution) has built is intriguing. Being able to set up communities around health is possibly the most important next step. While I never really want to go and share my medical history with strangers, there is something to be said group therapy. Getting tips on treatment, finding out who the good doctors are should be easier than it is now. As the baby boomers get older I see this as a great untapped community.
So how does AIM survive in this environment of the great diaspora of social networks? I believe it starts by opening up our APIs. We have allowed many niche products to be built over the past 11 months and 25 days. If you are into the club scene and want to interact with other clubbers, then check out Doppelganger. If you want to easily interact with other gamers who love MMOG games, then head over to PlayLinc. These are highly targeted communities that the advertisers crave and I believe users are clammoring for.
The question becomes how does AOL or for that matter any of the big players survive the disaggregation of networks. The answer lies in providing the back bone to these social networks. Second Life has a solid infrastructure that can host thousands of users at once, but in a way that one community never has to know that the other communties exist. The users are in our networks, they have interest, they just do not quite have the organizing principals to do it themselves. As a result we need to enable developers and companies to do it for them. I believe strongly that the incentive for Yahoo, AOL, Google to do this work once the advertising model changes on the internet, but for now all that matters is total eyeballs using your product.
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Tech Trends IV - What's the Next Step in Social Networking
I believe that the next phase in community and social networking will follow a path opposite of the organizing principals at the dawn of man. When humans first walked the Earth they lived in individual family units, eventually families came together to form villages, towns and then cities. In building communities on the net, we are doing the opposite. It seems most people have organized themselves in a few distinct communities, SecondLife, Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, etc. While each of these services particularly Facebook gives its users some granularity in being able to join groups of interest, at the end of the day you are just a member of a giant community. The next step in this evolution is to actually go backwards from the way we organized. For an extreme example, maybe we will see "countries or states set up in SecondLife where if you are interested in cats, the Redskins, and suffer from popcorn addiction there will be a "town" for you, where you have to slowly integrate into the town to become a "townie". Communities will evolve from millions into hundreds. Now you may be thinking, "wait, how can this be a business, web 2.0 is all about eye balls?" I agree it is all about eye balls, but I think advertisers will be looking at the value of those eye balls. If I am The Popcorn Factory, I know I will have 'n' number of users in the Redskins, popcorn addict community, and those ads will be invaluable to them.
Step 1 - build targeted communities
Step 2 - sell ad space to companies that will be uber targeted in the niche networks
Step 3 - profit --- Well maybe
We are seeing some of these small factions develop on the internet right now, for example, if you are into airline miles, you would join FlyerTalk to learn the secrets of earning extra miles. It is organized by airline, but that is as far as it goes. If I am interested in tips from a fellow United Airlines DC flyer, there is really no way to drill down to that level. Even then, there would be thousands of people in that community. Could I drill down more? I should be able to.
I see one social network missing and that is health care. I promiss I am not a shill for Revolution Health Care, but what Steve Case (full discloser former CEO of AOL, now CEO of Revolution) has built is intriguing. Being able to set up communities around health is possibly the most important next step. While I never really want to go and share my medical history with strangers, there is something to be said group therapy. Getting tips on treatment, finding out who the good doctors are should be easier than it is now. As the baby boomers get older I see this as a great untapped community.
So how does AIM survive in this environment of the great diaspora of social networks? I believe it starts by opening up our APIs. We have allowed many niche products to be built over the past 11 months and 25 days. If you are into the club scene and want to interact with other clubbers, then check out Doppelganger. If you want to easily interact with other gamers who love MMOG games, then head over to PlayLinc. These are highly targeted communities that the advertisers crave and I believe users are clammoring for.
The question becomes how does AOL or for that matter any of the big players survive the disaggregation of networks. The answer lies in providing the back bone to these social networks. Second Life has a solid infrastructure that can host thousands of users at once, but in a way that one community never has to know that the other communties exist. The users are in our networks, they have interest, they just do not quite have the organizing principals to do it themselves. As a result we need to enable developers and companies to do it for them. I believe strongly that the incentive for Yahoo, AOL, Google to do this work once the advertising model changes on the internet, but for now all that matters is total eyeballs using your product.
gregsblog at 9:53:00 PM EST Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | digg this
