Social Networking is definitely fun, but some players are feeling lost
Haven’t even experienced Social Networking fatigue…
It is predicted that Social Networking will reach its peak in around 2009 before experiencing gradual decline.
2 years is too far away, at least to an average user. Why not have all the fun today?
The truth is, I am really enjoying Facebook and all it’s got: relationship-centric network, mature core functionalities, rich applications, nice gifts, intuitive design…
Mini-feed is also a great idea! Whale done, Mark! With it I can explore what my friends have just been doing and so can they. A great way to know more about other people.
…but I just realized one important piece is missing
You can explore what your friends do daily on Facebook. Very good already…
Consider it more deeply, have you identified what are missing here?
You don’t know what your friends do in real life. Furthermore, you don’t know what they THINK!
Knowing one’s activities on one platform is great, but would it sometimes drive you to the assumption that you know what others are doing and thus spend less time interacting with them via more traditional but human way or reading what they have to write?
How do people express their ideas? Via what they have to write down (Blog!), or take photos on (Photoblog!), or produce video clip for (Vidlog!). Less likely via sets of pre-designed virtual gifts 
No, I don’t mean that gifts don’t represent the hearts. I still treasure each and every gift my friends have been giving me, but I’d appreciate it more if they simply write in their own words or post their own design.
Because we’ve been bringing content to Social Networks…
I have emphasized many times that Social Networking is totally different from Blogging. However, due to the two facts that they are born so close to each other and that several sites offer both simultaneously such as Live Spaces or Yahoo! 360, the two are often mistaken to have to be together.
Let’s, for now, consider them cousins anyway. Who should follow whom?
It happens all the time that Blogging has to follow Social Networking, mainly because:
- The number of people ready to send pre-defined gifts outcrowds the number of those willing to write about what they think
- The inertia to connect with quick messages outdoes the urge to share well-thought ideas
- Social Networking activities are less time-consuming and less effort-consuming so they are done more frequently within the day. On the contrary, Writing takes time and efforts and Reading is usually done for once. In comparison, users visit Social Networking sites much more often than they do Blogs. “More times of visits” makes the impression of “being bigger”. Smaller ones always have to follow bigger ones don’t they?
- More times of visits per day means more ads generated and higher click-through rates. Subsequently, more revenues for site owners and more investments are expected.
User-generated contents, if applicable, may be integrated into Social Networking profiles via RSS and/or addons. Correct me if I’m wrong, though it takes much more time and efforts to write posts, the section containing these posts is not the center of the majority of Social Networking profiles, and is often depressed by the higher density of other quicker and painless activities.
…but why not the other way around?
After following me down here, is there any reason you can think of to do the other way around, which means to bring Social Networking functionalities to Blogs?
Shaking head?
What’s the point?
Any profits doing so?
I’m answering this question: Yes! There are.
Those serious about publishing their own content will not be hindered by limitations. The will to write will push the authors to overcome the (possible) difficulties.
How the world floats
We’ll see how people do the hard job of bringing Social Networking to Blogs.
MyBlogLog: more than merely $222 per blog
MyBlogLog builds communities around blogs and provides bloggers the ability to be updated of activities of their connections. Activities here are content-centric: read and comment.
The recent $10 million acquisition by Yahoo! has raised interests in MyBlogLog. MyBlogLog reports 45,000 registered blogs. A simple math gives us the price of each: $222. An innocent question comes following: will Yahoo!’s ads cover this cost?
Come on! Don’t pretend to be that naive. An acquisition doesn’t necessarily offer tangible benefits today or even next year, but the truth is that the concept and foundation of the seller then becomes more powerful in the strong hand of the buyer.
Acquiring MyBlogLog belongs to a grand strategy of Yahoo!. “MyBlogLog - a Yahoo! service” will not generate handsome profits alone, but will do so greatly when the platform is integrated with other legacy Yahoo! services such as Flickr, del.icio.us, Mash, Yahoo! Blog platform.
I am bringing networks to my blog with MyBlogLog.
DiSo: what should always have been
Distributed Social Networking is the next ambition of Open Web community. It brings
Visualize this:
- All things are done on your site without having to push your content to a small box in your Social Networking profiles
- You can add other bloggers as friends instead of simply putting them in your blogroll
- You can offer people your RSS feeds
- You can see your connections’ updates such as: Tai reads ‘Kafka on the shore Review’ on Lisa’s blog in 19/12/2007
- You have your status on your blog
- You see and can choose to pose list of recent readers of your blog
- You can send friend requests to other bloggers
- All things are done on your site. No tight boxes in other places
What does this mean? It means your content is the center of your site. What takes the most of your time and efforts deserves meritorious position.
How does it sound?
How do you feel about its future?
I know you care, so please just share…
Tags of this article: 360,acquisition,activity,addon,blogging,community,design,diso,facebook,integration,interaction,live,microsoft,mybloglog,rss,social,social-network,social-networking,strategy,thinking,yahoo!.
Last update December 19, 2007
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