Social Networks for Everyone!! Blog

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Just a few days ago, Jeremiah Owyang , Sr Analyst at Forrester Research, asked in his blog (a must read if you are interested in social networking) this question: Where you think the future of White Label Social networks is headed over the next 5 years, and why you back up that prediction?

This question is related with his previous post on May 22th about white label social network vendors. He’s preparing a report for Forrester about this topic and he wanted to know from his audience what is really important for selecting white label social networks vendors.

Ok, back to his original question. I has been thinking heavily about this question for 2 main reasons:

First and probably more obvious because as a Partner in a white label social network provider (rsitez) our future depends exactly on predicting this future to better position ourselves for success.

And second because as I see more and more of the sites created by rsitez customers, I started to realize how many different uses this could have and that this could be really bigger than what industry analyst think.

I pasted below my sig. the answers that were awarded as winners in Jeremiah’s blog.

These are great answers and all of them are logic and consistent with my experience in rsitez and how we see evolving our industry but I don’t see consolidation coming so quickly.

It is normal that big players will acquire startups to be part of this industry but I believe that the market will grow in so many directions that it will require multiple providers to serve many different segments and difficult integration could prevent M&A activity.

I see a future in which almost every big company with online presence will need to have some community feature, even the one that don’t believe it today, they would be forced by competitors to do so. In this case, from my experience each of these customers will require customization of their social network solution. When this happen even if competitor providers are using similar technology it’s costly and difficult to integrate them under the same company.

The complexity will be even bigger because this customization of social sites not only occur with big customers but also with micro-sites. You will surprise of some of the customization requests that rsitez has from very small social networks that don’t aspire to be visited by thousands.

Based on these custom requests, I see a huge potential for the tech consulting business and I will not be surprise if instead of consolidation between vendors we see vertical integration of software vendors and consulting service providers.

Well these are my thoughts about what it is sure will be a really fun years to come. This is only my second post (yeah!) so sorry I know that I need to improve a lot. I should thanks Jeremiah with his blog to bring me back to my commitment for this year of start blogging about this exciting industry. I hope I will be more consistent going forward.

Now for you…what do you think?

Thanks

Luis

From 29th May, Jeremiah Owyang blog

Carmen Delessio writes:

In 5 years, there will be consolidation in this area. The remaining players will provide deep services to closed affinity groups and simple services to very small groups. Large corporations will be more interactive and engaged with customers through these tools, but it will be seen as a normal extension of their web sites and not a standalone community. Facebook and future large social sites will provide ties to these networks – small and large.
Corporations that blur the line between products and affinity will be succcessful with social networks.

Jeremiah: Carmen gets it, it’s not about “or” it’s about “and”. There’s plenty of room for white label vendors in the world of Facebook and MySpace. I enjoy her future perspective in making corporate websites relevant again. Good stuff, enjoy the conference!

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John Bell writes:
For public social networks, the “white-label” space is due for shakeout and consolidation. All you had to do was browse the “vendor” floor at Community 2.0 a few weeks back and see the clustering of 5-6 different platforms with overlapping feature sets and minor tweaks on un-tried busiess models (charge by the user, charge by implementation, charge by time).They cannot all succeed. Hopefully the market will favor those with real distinctions and with the best technology. I am pretty technologically savvy but still don’t feel prepared to judge Mzinga next to Jive next to…..

The most immediate an tangible use of white labels is in a space where the label doesn’t really matter: employee intra/extranets. The social network-based model where the staff member is the dominant knowledge “unit” is the natural course of all extranets. Many companies have been spending quite a bit to create their internal social net for knwoledge management, access and communication. The wide range of choices from teh current slew of socnets will drive down the costs of implementation dramatically.

The interesting innovation to come is when employee social networks bridge the divide between walled-garden access and content to the public face of employees. I want to share one thing internally – client materials and insight – and something else externally – though leadership and co-creation. Will there come a time when my staff “profile” at Ogilvy becomes portable to me next job?
Anyhow, I’m just sayin’…..

Jeremiah: John often leaves broad thinking comments on my blog, as he should as he’s one of the senior leaders at Ogivy interactive, so I’d expect no less. I agree with John, we’ll see a shake out in this space in the next few years, especially after traditional IT companies, ERP, CMS companies realize it may be better to buy than build their own. Thanks John, hope you live blog the show.

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Honorable Mention
Ajay Mungara writes:
I think the whole concept of social networking is getting morphed into all websites. I see an explosion of corporate and consumer websites touting the social networking bandwagon. Just because a website has the so called social networking capabilities (blogs, wiki, podcast, twitter streams, facebook apps, etc.) does not make it a social networking site. Tools & services are only the means, but not the end. Today most of the tools / services are centered around providing social networking capabilities to your websites, but five years from now the best services will be the ones that can actually harness the power of “social intelligence” for practical business/consumer uses.Jeremiah: Thanks Ajay, who’s busy over at Intel in the trenches dealing with these very issues. We agree, the tools aren’t as important as the actual relationship changes companies will have with their customers.