Tag: Ning

  • Just Business?

    A few days back, LinkedIn added a feature that I’d asked for the last time I wrote about the service – the ability to add RSS feeds to groups. Depending on the functionality enabled by your group manager in any group, you could add a site/feed that fits the group profile and all the members could benefit. From the comments on the page, there seem to be a few implementation issues. Vijay, who manages the Digital Marketing India group on LinkedIn (the one I most actively participate in) has added a few feeds, but we’re yet to play with it much 🙂

    He also pointed me to this interview with Allen Blue, a LinkedIn co-founder. Allen mentions in the interview that ‘groups’ is the most exciting thing they’re working on now, though they seem to be doing things to limit the functionality of the groups. He also says that (among others) he’s impressed with Ning and Facebook. Will come back to that in a bit.

    I am wondering if this feeds functionality will also be made available to company webpages. For now the pages are pretty impressive, with a whole lot of data being provided. But there are possibilities – like allowing page managers to create an RSS feed of news about the company, which any user could subscribe to and be updated. (a Google alert approach). They could also allow multimedia uploads (haven’t seen any yet) and more interactivity. In short, become the second interface of the company, right after their corporate site – what brands are doing with Facebook fan pages, only on LinkedIn it will be more of a serious interaction.

    Ning has been making waves and I have been seeing a lot of people utilising it to make networks. As of Sep 08, it had 2955000 users and a YOY growth rate of 251% (LinkedIn was right behind at 193%) (via StartUp meme) But (at least) for now, I don’t see it operating in the same space as LinkedIn, since Ning is more on building groups around common interests, and that’s only one of the things LinkedIn does.

    The real action will happen when Xing, the European business network will start deriving some synergy from its recent acquisition – SocialMedian. Towards the second half of 2008, Xing had 7 million users as against LinkedIn’s 12 million, and was making profits. Though I’ve not come across a lot of Xing users in India, even LinkedIn is not an ancient phenomenon here. So there’s definitely time to catch up. Xing has most of the functionality that LinkedIn has, but more importantly has a brilliant resource in Social Median, and its implementation of Facebook Connect. During its acquisition, the then CEO had said that Social Median, with its news gathering (from 19000 sources) and custom filtering was a perfect fit for Xing. I couldn’t agree more. The value it could add to the individual and the groups he/she is part of is tremendous. This is an area that LinkedIn has not fully tapped.

    Meanwhile, the service that I thought might be a good buy for LinkedIn – Yammer, recently announced that Twitter updates can now be imported into Yammer. When I had written about Yammer first, I had mentioned a ‘bridge’ between Yammer and Twitter. This move has solved part of it, for me the more important part is the (filtered) Yammer updates going into Twitter, and come to think of it, LinkedIn. But of course, this is connected a lot with an organisation’s levels of transparency.

    And if all this wasn’t enough, we now have a new player – Blellow. TC called it a Yammer meets LinkedIn meets Twitter entity. Blellow describes itself as a productivity microblog, that  allows users to collaborate, find jobs and solve problems via a Twitter like interface with ‘followers’ and ‘following’, private messaging, @ replies, (the question here is ‘What are you working on?’) Where it differs from Twitter is that updates can go upto 300 characters, users are organised into groups, and there are threaded discussions. One can create a profile, form groups based on projects or interests, ask questions in groups and give ‘kudos’ for answers that help (a rating mechanism), post jobs (for a price), plan meetups..  From the looks of it, its a great niche package for freelancers and people looking for quick help in specific fields, maybe LinkedIn could acquire and scale up? 🙂

    With the personal-professional lines blurring, the Xing-SocialMedian-Facebook Connect association is something LinkedIn should be looking closely at. It either has to get an equally strong partner or develop features and data portability by itself, and perhaps acquire services that complement its own services.

    until next time, mind your business 😀

  • The Construct of Communities

    The initial version of Blogger enabled communities only through comments. And it did enable it quite well, as my other blog would validate. A lot of the people who comment there have been doing so for years now, and some of them are not bloggers. These days, I’ve been noticing a lot of people utilising the ‘follow‘ function that a recent version of Blogger had introduced. Of course, there were many entities that were providing this service, but the official Blogger add on is still a help. What pleased me much was the inbuilt feed mechanism, which would get people to use RSS more.

    Twitter of course, is built on a follower/following concept. But I’d say that Twitter/Facebook/Orkut/LinkedIn are not built around one entity as much as a blog is. The groups on these (except Twitter which still hasn’t got groups outside Japan) can be considered communities.

    I saw a list of fastest growing social networks a while back, with Twitter leading (in terms of growth), not surprisingly. But what i was surprised by was the appearance of Ning at #3 (despite the note that in the survey, it did not meet the minimum sample standards). My surprise had perhaps to do with the fact that, though i am a member of a couple of communities, i have not been active there. Both the communities I am part of are centred around shared interests.

    It made me wonder about the construct of communities that individuals would prefer to build in the future. Would it centre around blogs, would it centre around microblogging tools like twitter, which I know a lot of bloggers now prefer. Would it be a customised version of twitter, that’s made possible by tools like Shout’Em or Twingr (via Mashable)  or even something like the Prologue theme of WordPress. Would it be based on lifestreaming services (self hosted like sweetcron or otherwise like storytlr) where they can aggregate activities that they do all around the net. Or perhaps a tangential version of this like Friendfeed which also builds in the community feature. Will iGoogle become more social? Would at some point of time, individuality merge into communities, as discussions around topics become more important than introduction of the topic in a personal space? Or would both exist (as it does in the current form) side by side, depending on subjective likes/dislikes without any commonality in evolution?

    until next time, social circles into social web

  • The Stage of Conversation

    Branded networks, that’s what the new property from Nautanki.tv (read the comments section) YouTopia is going to be. (via agencyfaqs). Update –  This is going to be called spaces, and is still under development.

    The rationale is that since brands, especially in a nascent market like India,  may not want to invest in the infrastructure thats required for social networks, YouTopia would provide the same for individuals and brands to create their own networks with “necessary tools or applications like instant messenger, forum and facility to upload and share videos or photos while configuring their social network”, in return for an annual subscription fee (in the case of brands).

    Reminds me of Ning, though in this case, they have said that the brand can choose an independent url (so is that unlike Ning where it has to be say, nautanki.ning.com). Also, there will be an ad network, which will operate on a revenue sharing basis between Nautanki and the owners.(?) (I don’t know whether Ning has a revenue sharing mechanism) And, does the last but one paragraph in the afaqs article mean an API? Hmm

    Now the question I’d like to ask is, while (apparently) every brand manager wants a Gang of Girls, is creating a social network the way to go about it, or is it more important to maintain a conversation with the consumers? The argument I have is the same as the one i had for the online communities vs groups -on -social networks post. If the conversation is already happening at a social network, isn’t it better to be a part of the conversation there and be a facilitator? Would a brand have enough meat to pull the audience to a place where it will be the only ‘attraction’, and will they be able to maintain the interest for long. A Facebook group/ page, for example, already offers most of the stuff mentioned above, and I’m sure more features will be added. People have a certain comfort level with twitter conversations, would a brand specific network be able to recreate that? Multi Brand Outlet or Exclusive Showroom?

    I understand that its debatable, but meanwhile, there are efforts on to sew the conversations happening on various platforms into one interface. So we have, in addition to Friendfeed, a browser – Flock, an add on to a browser – Minggl, and the last i heard a new entity – Combo (via Startup Meme), which attempts to do this through a web based dashboard and widgets. I hope they send me that invite soon, so i can do some test drives. 🙂

    Meanwhile, have you noticed a comment option in Facebook’s news feeds, quite like Friendfeed, i thought. And here’s something for you to go ogle. That was Aditi Govitrikar, now where’s that I’m feeling lucky button?

    until next time, scatter or gather?