Redefining the Social Network and Social Media

“I don’t think it is easy for MySpace and Facebook to adapt and bend to the needs of individual brands.” – Alexander Mouldovan, Founder, Crowd Factory

They had names like Compuserve, The Well, Tribe and Usenet. One of them, a little regarded place called America Online, became a behemoth, though the others fell either into history or obscurity. The Internet turned into the World Wide Web,  into the entomology of modern life.

Now there is Web 2.0 and “social” media technology – enabling an Internet created by individuals as well as corporations. But this is not, as some people and media reports would have you believe, a new Internet – rather, it is a decades-old promise finally coming true.

More than a year ago I said that 2006 would be the year that blogging passes from novelty into utility, and it did – blogs are not only mainstream media themselves, but they are a staple of traditional media news sites. The same shift is now happening with social networks, albeit with a significant difference.

Blogs were something new, a powerful self-publishing tool that opened the door to a “read-write” web. Moreover, blogs will always be a part of the web, not the web in its entirety.

But social networks – or to be more exact, technologies that allow people to interact and share ideas and content instantaneously – are becoming the Web. Eventually, the Internet itself will be one, giant, global social network, created by and for individuals.

The First Wave – Gated Communities
You can’t scratch the Internet today without finding the word “social.” Instead of building static web sites, corporations are now building their own “social networks.” Cisco Systems, which owns a social network development company, is purchasing Tribe.Net’s technology so it can build networks for corporate customers.

Nike has a social network. So do Carnival Cruises and Sheraton hotels. There are hundreds of social networks with more going online all the time – and while acting as separate membership communities, almost all have the same “social” features like blogs, audio and video sharing, messaging and friends lists.

These types of social networks – led by the likes of powerhouses MySpace and Facebook, Bebo and Gather – represent the first wave. They give members freedom but within certain parameters and interfaces. They are not so much closed communities but “gated” ones, where members must act and express themselves in certain ways or discuss defined topics. Think of it as being part of a homeowner’s association that allows everyone to have a garage as long as it’s painted one of five pre-approved colors (sounds strange, but I live in Orange County, Calif., where this really happens.)

The Second Wave – An Internet Built With Bridges
But if Internet users hate anything, they hate constraint. A second wave of social networks promises to remove all constraint – in effect, to disband the homeowner’s association and let people paint their garages whatever color they want.

These networks – networks like Second Life and Ning, the latest brainchild from Netscape founder Marc Andreessen – aim to turn the Internet into a tabula rasa where customization is king. According to a recent New York Times article, Ning allows “anyone to set up a community on any topic…Ning users choose the features they want to include, like videos, photos, discussion forums or blogs. Their sites can appear like MySpace, YouTube or the photo sharing site Flickr – or something singular.”

Furthermore, standards like OpenID hope to make identity transferable from community to community. Just think – an Internet of true imagination, entire worlds that people build themselves. An Internet built not with walls or gates, but with bridges.

People Make It Social, Not Technology
For this to happen we need to do our part, too:

• We need to change our thinking of the Internet as something that includes social networks to something that is a social network.

• Technology allows media to be shared, but technology alone doesn’t make blogs or RSS feeds or tagging “social.” Only people can do that. In other words, a blog is “sharable” media – media that is easily shared with others anywhere, that can be updated quickly and with which we can interact – but it’s how people engage with the blog that determines whether it is also “social" media.

Nevertheless, the next wave is here. Social networks and social media are disappearing into the fabric of the Web. The promise of Compuserve and “Web 1.0” sites is here.

And as for what comes next? Well, that responsibility now appears to lie with us.

Comments

[Mike Driehorst]

Interesting prediction, Gary.

I wonder if you could make a parallel to how civilization grew to how the WWW has evolved: clans/tribes, then villages, towns, cities, connected regions, countries, etc. All growing and interacting via bridges (or, rather roads and modes of transportation). But, as you describe, the modes will be digital.

It's almost human nature to *want* to come together in larger communities (that sense of belonging).

A blog from the U of Maryland had a fascinating post that sort of echoes your comments. It focuses on testimony from Tim Berners-Lee before a U.S. House subcommittee. In part, he states:

"The good news is that a number of technical innovations...along with more openness in information sharing practices are moving the World Wide Web toward what we call the Semantic Web....The Semantic Web will enable better data integration by allowing everyone who puts individual items of data on the Web to link them with other pieces of data using standard formats."
You can find that post here:
http://tinyurl.com/2swcq4
-- Mike