Jeremiah Owyang

Hi Jeremiah, you spoke about Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, and I thought it would be good to draw your attention to a couple of alternative social networks aiming to build networks in very different ways.

An interesting example that takes the strength of your relationships into account when constructing your social network is Visible Path. Essentially, you can only add someone into your network only if there has been an email exchange, and within the network, the relationship is measured by the number and frequency of email exchanges. With an outlook plugin, they track the rise and wan as well.

Another interesting example of a social network is illumio. What it does is that it scans your PC for documents, and based on those documents, decide what you are interested in. They will recommend who you should get in touch with, and when you ask a question into the Illumio, they will in turn send it to the people they think would have the answer. Of couse, you can form groups too

I do not think either works particularly well, because we still have to install some form of outlook/PC plugin for them to be able to accurately “predict” things. But moving forward, I think someone like Google might allow users to “opt-in” to form such a powerful social network. They already have everything they need to know about me to form a very very effective network of trusted links and accurate interests. Scary but exciting. That would be my own prediction.

Also, carrying on our conversation, Xing is still much smaller than LinkedIn, but they grew faster than LinkedIn in their home country of Germany, and matching LinkedIn in terms of growth in Europe over the last couple of years, although LinkedIn still has the headstart. They have an interesting expansion strategy via partnerships n accquisitions in selected markets though. Also, their conversion rate is 17%, which certainly sounds pretty high to me.

I made a mistake – Do not think Xing is bigger in Asia than LinkedIn. They have traction, but still smaller. And check out these international linkedIn(s), all localized:

vnspoke.com, iconnecte.com, wealink.com, MoiKrug.ru

One other thing that we spoke about. I suspect it is not the main social networks like Facebook that will adopt universal ID systems, but rather the long tail of social networks, perhaps best typified by the informal social networks of the many different wikis around. These are the ones without the critical mass of networks like Facebook, and hence will definitely benefit from having a universal ID that can be used across all of them.

…here is the correct “feeling a little disappointed” link.

Great post Jeremiah.
I’m not sure how I missed this, but I only came across it now.
I wrote about OpenID and Facebook a while back as well, and I agree with your thoughts that Facebook will have faster Identity 2.0 adoption than OpenID. OpenID is somehow still too complex for the average webuser.

Although I’d like to see OpenID come up trumps, I think it will be the platform that appeals to the lowest common denominator. Facebook in this case.