What are the most important topics in Social Networking today?
Social Networking is a fluid space where the important issues are rapidly evolving.
Marketing overload, consolidation, widgets, measuring engagement, privacy issues, and business models are all topics in debate.
What do you think are the most important topics being discussed?
I’m very interested in all perspectives - marketers, publishers, media, content owners = and of course, the MySpacers, Facebookers and most definitely, LinkedIn users.
Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Good Answers (1)
We have following issues,
1. Ownership of user data, and legal rights.
2. Standardization
3. Decentralization and Interoperability
4. Social Network Fatigue
5. Privacy
6. Authentication and Authorization
7. Portability
What is user data:
I consider user data is profile/contact information, social public and private relations and history of relations, links to other social sites/profiles, bookmarks, microblog/social message updates, blog Posts and comments, pictures, videos or any other media.
1. Ownership:
In my opinion the most important issue is the ownership of user-data, the users should be able to control their data and its visibility, licensing, and accessibility issues. Yahoo's Flickr is a good example, here users can specify their rights and can choose licensing type for their data.
2. Standardization:
Social networks should use standard formats, these formats should be machine readable, Microformats are a good choice they have standards like hCard, XFN, hResume, hAtom, XFolk, and many others the use of Microformats should be encouraged in social networks.
3. Decentralization and Interoperability
Social Networks should be decentralized, instead of having duplicate data on many social sites, users should be able to aggregate all their online social data within their social networks, the sharing of this data we already have RSS/ATOM. Users should be able to show their Flickr or YouTube contents on their social networks, instead of uploading it again, or creating duplicate data. The Decentralization and Interoperability are similar topics, Social Sites/Networks can provide access to user's public data with RSS/ATOM feeds that are read only to encourage decentralization, but for interoperability, we need standards to provide controlled read/write access to and from other social sites. Interoperability can be bidirectional, and can be achieved with technologies like OAuth, and RESTFul APIs.
4. Social Network Fatigue
I live in India, and my friends use Orkut, I like Facebook but I have no existing friends there, people are comfortable with Orkut in India, I want them to come to Facebook, but they are not interested in joining other social networks, so either I have to remain on Orkut.
So we can not be-friend unless we are on same social network, this should be changed, when we will have inter-operable social networks, people should be able make social relations with other networks, instead of inviting them to join your social network, Social Network providers should works on this, I want to be able to scrap my Orkut friend, from my Facebook wall.
5. Privacy
Users should be able to control privacy/visibility of their contents, and it should be customizable, what I want to put for public, what I want to keep private, or what I want to show a group of selected friends, should be controlled by myself.
6. Authentication and Authorization
We live our life on internet, most of us use same user-ids and passwords on many sites, do you think is it secure ?, why not use technology like OpenID, that provide authentication on OpenID enabled sites with your OpenID url. For authentication, Social Networks should support OpenID, and for authorization, soon we will have OAuth, with OAuth users will be able to authorize other sites, to have controlled read/write access to user's resources, without the need of sharing your password with other social sites.
7. Portability:
People use many social networks, their data should be portable, and social networks should not restrict users in any case to own, modify, delete, or move their data. Still almost all social networks are closed networks, they do not provide APIs or technology to provide their data to other social sites/networks.
Links:
More Answers (8)
Olena B
Consumer Marketing Manager at Philips
Best Answers in: Education and Schools (2), Mergers and Acquisitions (1), Equity Markets (1), Professional Networking (1)
Hello Jason,
One of the important topics is the difference in audiences of various social networks. An interesting essay covering the class divisions on MySpace vs. Facebook was written by danah boyd - see link.
Hope this helps!
Olena
Links:
Pat W
Management consultant and trainer with Pattern Research, Inc.
Best Answers in: Professional Networking (3), Mentoring (2), Ethics (2), Customer Service (1), Occupational Training (1), Business Development (1), Change Management (1), Organizational Development (1), Project Management (1), Branding (1), Career Management (1), Professional Organizations (1), Small Business (1), Starting Up (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
Hi!
Interesting question. I think that it depends what one means by important.
One issue that interests me is the issue of determining the credibility of people one meets online. Everyone can make mistakes. In real life (hopefully), we all do things to decide if we are going to start, continue or stop a relationship with some. However, I have noticed in both online and real time social networking that there can be a tendency to "trust the club"
with sometimes heart-breaking consequences, it means one's life savings or credit rating.
Someone, for example, who is a member of a group with stated shared religious or spiritual values can earn trust simply by spouting the right words, and take advantage of people financially. I have seen this happen in both conventional and socalled New Age networks. Sometimes, it is not because the person is a crook (although crooks love to join and exploit such networks, because it is easier than the proverbial shooting fish in a barrel). It is because they are incompetent, but they don't know it, and neither do their victims.
References can help, but in other cases two good people can have a very bad experience with each other, or a good person has a great experience with someone who proves to have a track record that is not so good. All of the "real world" ethical problems of confidentiality and fair-mindedness come in to play.
I think some folks who use social networking are somewhat naive. They think that the fact that someone presents themselves articulately and in a friendly fashion means that they are also automatically trustworthy - both reliably honest and competent - in business dealings. This issue concerns me more than widgets, technology or marketing.
Pat
Privacy/greater user control (we want them)
AND
Non-commercial/materialistic categories for user defined signifiers (i.e., our social and cultural values rather than how we spend our money)
Me = user/writer:
I'm a long time user, early adopter, teacher and web content creator. I'm certainly no expert in social software (as a developer or academic) but I've been engaging the key conversations, figures and advanced social issues for a long time (link to my social software category below).
Experts:
Read anything danah boyd has to say. She's one of the few who engages issues beyond money making.
zephoria.org
Links:
I think we have two issues that are related in a way, because they all relate to the large amount of usage that these networks are getting, and how central they are becoming to our online lives.
1. Overload: We are becoming overwhelmed with too much volume of information as these networks become bigger and more feature-laden. We simply can't keep up with all the people, all the content and the information!
2. Privacy: As we spend more time online, we are giving away more and more of our privacy. It may be incremental but one day we wake up and realize that it is all out there and we can't take it back!
Figuring out how to keep some of our privacy, and manage our time and network usage will be key to the continued growth of social networking online.
Ian L
Lead internet marketer, ringer of Internet Cash Registers, President, Portent Interactive
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (3), Web Development (3), Guerrilla Marketing (1), Viral Marketing (1), Search Marketing (1), Career Management (1), E-Commerce (1)
In my opinion, the three most important topics are:
1. How will acquisitions affect the market? If Microsoft, for example, bought Facebook, will that put them over the top? At some point, one or two networks are going to run far ahead of everyone else. The rest of the social networks will be fighting over niche markets.
2. Will anyone be able to keep successful networks from turning into cesspools of spam, questionable members, etc..? If they can't, then every social network will have a limited lifespan.
3. Will anyone develop a successful distributed social network? If anyone finds a way to create a social network that's truly a network - one that doesn't rely on a central site - they may find the next killer app.
Mario P
Marketing strategist and creative writer for hire
Best Answers in: Advertising (1), Internet Marketing (1), Business Plans (1)
The social graph, hands down.
My "clean and simple" answer: cleanliness and simplicity.
Facebook, for example, is extremely clean and remarkably simple. You don't have a drove of fake users, pornography spam, poorly configured profiles, or annoying music tracks. At the same time, the interface is simple enough for anyone to use, yet advanced enough to add applications.
Hope it helps.
-Rob
Jonathan L
Managing Director at midsize NYC Advertising Agency
Best Answers in: Advertising (5), Internet Marketing (3), Compensation and Benefits (1), Direct Marketing (1), Viral Marketing (1), Business Development (1)
Since this is within the context of a business Q&A, I would say the most important topic is how a business can benefit from social networks. Companies are dumping tons of money into this space with little idea what they are doing or, more importantly, how they expect to recoup this investment. The answer requires a lot of thought, a lot of planning, and frankly saying "no" to a lot of short-sighted options.
