As I talk to people with new product ideas on the web that have any kind of social/community functionality at the core of the product, they usually struggle with (or invest inordinate amount of time thinking about) how to create a new social graph from scratch in a world where user’s social graphs are already existing somewhere. So that’s a non-trivial issue from product developer’s perspective.
From a user perspective a problem is that I have my social graphs in multiple places already but still I am not able to share all my “stuff” with the right people.
I think the solution to both these issues is the ability to “carry your community with you” on the web. This means I should be able to have my social graph being available on the apps I use on the web. The good news is that this is already emerging as an important trend on the web with social networks actually offering services that enable social-graphs to be exported outside the walled-gardens of their sites and on to other useful applications on the web. The recent announcement by facebook about “facebook connect” is one of such moves.
This trend is the next step in evolution of utility of social networks on the web. First, by having applications available INSIDE the social network context, these networks made user experience more compelling and convenient for users and increased the utility of networks themselves. And now, these networks are going OUTSIDE their walls to use their value prop of having existing social graphs to add value to other apps on the web. I think of it as “distributing the social graph utility”, if you will.
Besides the obvious impact of such a move (and this is not isolated move, other major players are also doing the same) for social networks, I think it also has potential to have a more profound impact on the life of new product developers and entrepreneurs I mentioned above. Now they can focus on doing a great job at solving the user problem they are building their apps for rather than investing time in resolving the problem of creating a social graph in a hyper-social-networked world we live in. From a technical perspective the social graph can now just be an API.
Moreover I believe this is just a first step and a more powerful concept that would emerge is “contextual-social-graphs-on-the-go”. This is best explained by an example. Imagine if you have 100 “friends” in your social graph and if you go to business section of new york times, your business savvy friends “surface” whereas if you go to NBA section of yahoo! sports your hoops savvy friends surface. This would be very useful and enable you to connect/share/communicate very efficiently with the right people at the right time.
Besides this product development innovation it would be interesting to see how it impacts the monetization (or lack of it) of social networks.
Summary:
Overall the trend of making available social graph outside social networking sites is important for social neworks as well apps on the web. It is still early days but more powerful patterns would emerge using this as a base. Monetization still remains open issue.
December 2, 2008 at 4:39 am |
Good Post CJ,
I totally agree with you that this is going to be a huge trend. I would add to your list the Google’s Friend Connect project and MySpace Data Availability, besides the fact that this last one is more focused in solving the multiple Profiles problem, which is a big problem as well because I have like 30 something Profiles on the Web and all of them are different and just one or two are really updated.
April 2, 2009 at 7:20 pm |
[...] way. But with the advent of facebook connect etc kind of functionality PLUS Open ID that let you carry your identity and social graph on the web we have a beginning of potentially consolidating and capturing that intent as [...]