A few weeks ago I wrote something on the social network aggregator sites, or the profile aggregators. I think that now that they have their "stuff" fixed, they had some problems, Profilactic is probably my favorite for the moment, including, of course, the name. But that's not why I'm doing this entry. I'm now going to look at the sites that do the "create your own social network" thang.
What's particularly interesting about these sites is that each of them, as DIY as they are, are each organized around a different paradigm. For example, Vox is "build your own social network around a rich media blog"; while Wikia is "build your own community around a wiki." Where, Ning and Tribe.net (acquired by Cisco) are build your own community around your....ummm (or as they say in the UK, "erm"), your community.
Lessons for the CRMer in You
Okay, once again, I'm going back to where I have to explain myself because I'm honestly not 100% sure that those who have read my stuff know why I'm driven to make the point squared about the Web 2.0 technologies. I've spent many a year (since 2003) saying CRM isn't a technology it is a "philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improve human interactions in a business environment."
Okay, the skeptics amongst you say, what's that got to do with the Web 2.0 technologies?
Well, buds and buddesses, here's the scoop. Web 2.0 provides the enabling technologies for CRM to to continue to improve human interactions in the current business environment - one in which the customer dominates the ecosystem. That means the technologies that CRM utilizes are no longer just the historically operational creatures they once were (remember the late, lamented META Group's "operational, collaborative, analytic" definition of CRM?), but now have to provide the means for customers to engage. That means that CRM is not just the way businesses manage their relationships with customers and make them good, but CRM must also provide the tools to help the customers engage with them - especially since the customers are using similar tools already for personal productivity and for the improvement in the quality of their personal value chains a.k.a. their lives. Enterprise 2.0 thus becomes businesses providing the means to capture what the customers are already doing on the outside. If they can provide the appropriate tools from their internal coffers, the businesses stand to gain the advocacy of their customers.
Yes, they do.
Now On With The Show
Okay, the original topic.....
The sites I have below are the ones that, at least at this point, have some real chops and provide you with an easy means to create a community/social network, though not with all the enterprise functions that say a Neighborhood America (customer to company enterprise-level social network) and Communispace (facilitated user community) provide. But these are for you if you're a consumer or as a small business (Brent Leary and Michael Thomas, take note, for Business for Technology Sake) - as long as you can get used to their approach, which differs in each case. I'm going to provide a 10 point simple rating based on simple criteria - some subjective (do I like the look and feel), some based on what I think are benchmark requirements for a social network - e.g. comments, ability to add friends (in business lingo, colleagues, partners, customers, prospects, etc.); some way to show presence (e.g. Twitter like or IM like features); ability to upload and display rich content; provision of social media tools like blogging, wikis, for participants; and several others). The other criterion will be business feasibility, whether or not they have been built for that or not. Sorry. Tough luck. It can be small business though which is almost like a person, right?
Wikia
This one has a lot of buzz. Founded by Jimmy Wales, creator of Wikipedia (see "Jimmy Wales, God or Man? If You Don't Know, check Wikipedia." Don't REALLY go there. I made that up.). Its framework is the one that's familiar to Mr. Wales. The wiki. Which makes a lot of sense and its why Wikia is doing pretty well at last count - apparently (according to their stats machine) about 30,000 plus contributors per day and a steady growth month over month of between 5% and 10% since the beginning of the year. The value here is that wikis are a great collaborative tool to develop increasingly deep knowledge of a subject, or to solve problems. Plus they provide some of the standard features that you would expect of a social network - ability to comment, ability to share rich media, etc. But the interface doesn't truly meet the standard for true interactivity in real time. Though all told, its not bad. But these are communities of interest, nonetheless, organized around topics and unlike most social networks, you can edit what other members are saying/writing/doing. So for a start, this is not the worst place to go.
PGreenblog Rating: 6/10

Ning
This is arguably the standard. Not only do you have what seems to be an Ajax-enabled or Flex-enabled drag and drop capability for this that makes the steps to setting up a social network easily, but it provides you with all the features you could conceivably want (or not) that range from RSS feeds to all kinds of rich media and whatever else you could conceive of, including community forums. You can even import your favorite widgets and all the associated functionality. You can entirely customize the look and feel. Because it really is easy to set up a "professional" looking social network, there are now 70,000 Ning-created social networks and counting since October 2004, when Gina Bianchini, their CEO, founded the company. This ain't a lightweight operation. Mosaic, Netscape and V.C. type and now Ning funder, Marc Andreessen is another mysterious - not figure behind the venture. The model for capitalist yumminess here is pretty conventional - they'll make money through advertising and premium services. Pretty much everyone in this space's model. But with 70,000 social networks, likely to succeed. Its-just-so-cool - even for someone who's 57 (me) and into CRM (me) and who can't beat anyone under 30 at a video game (me). If I were a small business....as Christopher Walken says in SNL's More Cowbell, I'd "explore the studio space."
PGreenblog Rating: 9.5/10

Best thing...check out this video on how to create a Ning social network, done by their CEO Gina Bianchini, and posted on The Scoble Show on February 27, 2007. It's worth spending the 12 plus minutes. Really.
Tribe.net and Five Across
What's interesting about this is who bought them. Cisco. In a manner of speaking, they are now part of Cisco's "human network" or more precisely their social media and web 2.0 strategic offering. (Incidentally, have you noticed how much "The Who" are being used for commercials and TV shows? The Cisco Human Network commercials AND CSI-NY use the same Who song "Baba O'Reilly." Check it out for Cisco's The Human Anthem and for CSI: NY - just watch the opening credits.). While they are very much a Netgen offering, they may or may not be bolstered for the enterprise by the other Cisco acquisition - Five Across which is a considerably more "robust" (I actually hate that word, but I'm being lazy right now) social networking platform (Connect 1.8 Community Builder is their most recent version). The issue is whether or not the integration of the two will be successful. On their own, neither of them is particularly spectacular, though they aren't bad either. Together, I'm guessing neither of them is spectacular, though I'm going to give them a "who in hell knows" for the moment. Its just so hard to see Cisco as a leader in social networking, isn't it? And its hard to see how a set of platforms built on different premises will integrate well. But what do I know? I'm just a Jewish guy from Long Island.
One interesting subfeature: when you set up your community, apparently you're given a geographic URL. So mine would start with "washington.tribe.net." Not sure how much that really means but its interesting. Isn't it? No?
PGreenblog Rating:INCOMPLETE

Vox
You'll note the URL for this blog. Its http://the56group.typepad.com. You see "typepad." That is the hosted version of Moveable Type (more or less), which along with Wordpress is probably the most comprehensive and best of the blogging software out there. The company that does this is SixApart. SixApart is a play-uh in the social media world. Vox is SixApart's venture into a blog-centered social networking platform that has very strong privacy controls. If you want limit the members of the community according to the your preferences and owner of the community - pretty easy to do. So if you want your friends to view X and your other friends to view Y and your family to view both X and Y, you can do that. Vox's approach is centered around blogging, but provides a rich media capability and easy "auto-linking" (more or less) for your favorite books, movies, restaurants, etc. In fact they encourage a "favorites" style by the way that they are set up. There is room (as in a blog) for comments, the interactivity is powerful and controllable. It is AJAX enabled so the creation of content is simple and fun actually. The business model? All free. They can do this because Typepad's premium services and ads generate their revenues as does the enterprise strength licenses for Moveable Type. The primary caveat is that this is blog-focused and you have to like that. I do. You might or might not. There are zillions of templates etc. to customize this thing with. All in all, very worthwhile, though if I were going to be a serious blogger who wanted a public to be reading my blog, Vox is usable, but might be overkill. The whole raison d'etre of Vox is blog-centered community, not blog per se. Here is a very good review from PC Magazine last October.
PGREENBLOG RATING: 8/10

Of course, you can do these things within the ever popular Facebook, and MySpace too, and soon to be LinkedIn but they have been covered so much, I didn't particularly want to reproduce more of that. Facebook has an ecosystem of its own - coming to these pages soon. The key here is that for all the CRM readers - these are idea for small business and customer engagement. While they don't have the security features needed in large scale enterprises nor the administrative controls - that would be in the realm of Neighborhood America and clones of them to do - these are adequate for smaller businesses that are looking to somehow involve their customers in a low cost but useful alternative. Do NOT underestimate the value of a social network to a customer base that already probably has a Facebook or MySpace individual friends network.
But also, one warning. Despite the low costs of entry, maintenance costs, mostly labor time can be pretty damned high.
Technorati : Ning, Tribe.net, Vox, Wikia, blogs, social media, social network, wikis
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