What makes Social Networks work?

I wanted to share some of my thoughts from a recent network discussion that I thought you might find interesting. What are you thoughts on why social networks are effective?

"Online social networks are just an internet manifestation of networking events/trade shows/happy hours (without the beer)/professional clubs/user groups/alumni groups .... the list goes on.

The core principal of networking remains the same, the only thing that has changed is access (not requiring travel), cost (free) and speed (real time). It's amazing to me how quickly social networking activity grows compared to traditional networking activities. The speed and cost make social networks so effective. These factors make online social networking one of the most effective ways to reach the greatest number of people in the least amount of time."

Social Media Overload??!

Social media sites have provided many benefits in the last few years, connecting millions of individuals and creating interactive online communities. Lately, the more sites I come across and join, the more I feel burnt out by all the hype for each new site. I feel as though I am losing the WOW factor with each new site i find. Does anyone feel the same?

Warp Speed with Spock

Having trouble keeping track of all your social networking profiles? Spock, a social networking profile search engine, aims to pull together all your profile information from sites such as yahoo, linkedin, myspace and many more. One of spock's main benefits is the authentication of your online identity. Spock also allows it's users to authenticate email, IM and other important information. "Now, that sounds logical..."

Social Network-Ning

Can't find a social network that meets your needs? Ning may have the network for you.




http://www.ning.com/

Rather than be a "one size fits all" social networking site, Ning allows people to create their own niche social networks. Ning is a hybrid of chat boards and MySpace with some nice additional features for video and chat. Getting a network set up is as simple as starting a blog.

Join Stuff I think is Cool, a new social network I created on Ning!

Songbird Sings

Songbird is an open source iTunes alternative from the makers of Firefox with some cool features. Being a PC, Mac and Linux user, I find it is a headache to move around music files from one computer platform to the next and still manage songs on one iPod. Luckily, this new "iTunes like" program allows you to easily manage files no matter what computer you decided to use. Since the Songbird platform is open to developers, it will be very interesting to see what comes out of this project once it gets closer to a 1.0 release.

"Word of Click" and Social Networking

Back in April of 2006, I used the term Word of Click to describe aspects of viral marketing / social networking performed by Skype to promote their products. This term helped describe the action taken by users to click, rather than speak, to share information over the web. Actions like:

• On site "Forward to a friend"
• Bookmarking
• Tagging
• etc...

Evidently, this has caught on in the web community since that posting about a year ago. I'm trying now to determine the roots of the phrase to see if it had originated on this blog. Wish me luck!