Michael's Place

In my previous journal entry I wrote that Social Networking is Not Broken but, rather, it is the perception of social networking that needs fixing. Too often, the knee-jerk reaction is to classify any site that leverages one’s social network as a YASN (“yet another social network”) -  a short-sighted generalization that unfairly casts a negative stigma on sites that may  be unique and useful.  

Who, though, is to blame for this negative stigma? Here are a few candidates:  

Friendster. They are probably the most well-known “social networking” site. Molly Wood writes “My big beef with Friendster was always, 'Well, what would I do there?'". What you can do is see how big you can grow your network by adding contacts. And since one has a limited pool of real-world contacts it quickly became not just acceptable, but common-place to add strangers as contacts on Friendster.  

Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. When this VC firm decided to fund the severance packages of high-profile Friendster execs it gave Friendster’s breed of social networking legitimacy. Hundreds of journalists started covering “social networking”, and hundreds of thousands signed up for Friendster and asked themselves the same question Molly Wood asked.  

Orkut. Under the guise of wanting to ramp up slowly, Orkut launched as an invite-only site. Soon blogs writing about Orkut weren’t complete without a handful of invitation requests in the replies. Orkut made it fashionable to add strangers as contacts as way to get into the service. Networks were artificial from day one.  

Tom. You know Tom. Everybody knows Tom. He’s the most popular person on the planet.  If you sign-up for Myspace he’s your friend that connects you to every other user on Myspace, including dozens of porn stars. If part of the fun of Friendster was seeing how big of a network you could get, Myspace upped the ante by giving people a humongous network to start (and perhaps a more interesting one because it contains porn stars).  

It’s unfair, though, to put all the blame  for social networking’s negative stigma on those mentioned above. They are all simply trying to make a buck. Good for them. The real culprits are the journalists and bloggers who perpetuate the notion that all social networking services are alike. These are the people that made Friendster synonymous with “social networking” even though the application is still in question to this day. Most continue to label Myspace a "social network" even though every user on the site is linked to one common node. Some writers flocked to Orkut, loaded their contact lists with strangers, and then, ironically, complain that social networking doesn’t work.  

The press coverage of social networking often misses the boat on two important concepts: target market, and the actual application.  It’s not uncommon for somebody to casually write about “social networking” and refer to 3 or 4 web sites that have nothing in common.  

Recently Judith Meskill wrote that LinkedIn is one of the only SNS in which I continue to maintain a semi-active membership. The likely reason is that Ms. Meskill is part of LinkedIn's target market. Myspace, according to Molly Wood, “attracts 16 to 34-year-old hipsters.”  While I don't know Ms. Meskill's age, based on her writing style and my correspondence with her, I wouldn’t describe her as a “hipster” nor am I surprised she doesn’t use Myspace. And that is exactly what Myspace wants! If non-hipsters started using Myspace, then it wouldn’t be for hipsters and their trendy niche is shot.  

More important than the target market is the application itself. What does the service help its users do? What is the goal of the service?  Judith Meskill says she’s semi-active on LinkedIn. The reason, in my opinion, that she uses LinkedIn and not, say... Friendster, has nothing to do with which site is better at “social networking” but rather which site is better at providing what Ms. Meskill wants to do.  

So, if social networking is “broken”, how do you fix it? Easy. When my 1 MP digital camera broke I threw it away. It wasn’t worth fixing. Do the same with the phrase “social networking” as it pertains to an industry or space. “Social networking” is merely a technology. It’s a component. Let’s stop writing about it as an industry. Just like we don't lump together E-mail and Instant Messaging as "contact list" applications, we should stop referring to any site that takes advantage of what will soon be a ubiquitous way to manage contact lists as a “social networking site”.  

Don’t write articles that compare Friendster to LinkedIn to Multiply.  Write about what these sites are about and group them with their true competitors.  Friendster is about meeting new people socially. So compare Friendster to sites like Match.com. LinkedIn is about meeting new people in a professional context. So write about whether LinkedIn is better than Monster.com or other sites that help you meet new people in a professional context.  Multiply is about sharing digital media and social blogging. So don’t compare Multiply to Orkut or Friendster.  Compare Multiply to Flickr or Blogger.

In the article “Five reasons social networking doesn’t work” Molly Wood writes that Myspace will make “more than $20 million in ad sales this year”.  $20 million! That sounds like it does work! Just as inconsistent is her defining Myspace’s unique target audience yet still bashing all social networking sites as if they were the same. This article, which should be called “Five reasons that some social networking doesn’t work for me,” is indicative that what’s amiss is social networking coverage.  If journalists stopped referencing social networking as an industry unto itself, this article wouldn’t exist. Instead, we’d get some great pieces discussing how different applications, some tried-and-true like dating, and some cutting-edge like video-blogging, are leveraging this new technology in compelling ways.