Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Feb 20, 2008

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly summary, read the summary, then quickly scan headlines, read the bullet, then click to learn even more.

I’ve created a category called Digest (you can see archives) where you can start to track and access these going forward. Quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read summary for analysis, and click link to dive in for more. You can subscribe to this digest tag only, which filters only these posts tagged digest.

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Web Strategy Summary
Much more global perspective in this digest, expansion starts to occur in other ares of the globe, or social networks are appearing based on culture and geography. One thing is certain, this is a global phenomenon and will continue to persist.

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Predictions: 2009, the year of Enterprise Social Networks
Dan Farber’s latest post captures that social networks will hit the enterprise in the following year. I gave some specific quotes on how companies should proceed –just like any other project.

Future: Mobile SoNets could reach $52 billion by 2012?
As social networks continue to grow along side mobile phones the opportunity for revenue (ecommerce, contextual advertising, or other premium services) could be at hand. This predictions piece suggests that 52 billion by 2012, if every person on the planet (6 billion of us) were to participate that would mean a about 8X per person?

Latin America: Sonico, a upcoming Social Network
Great exposure from Duncan Riley at Techcrunch on elevating Sonico, a social network that is popular in Colombia, El Salvador, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Cuba and Mexico.

Expansion: Japan’s Mixi to expand to China
A mere 13 million members in Japanese Mix’s social network (aimed at youth) and they are already planned at expansion in Shanghai, then growth to the rest of China.

Lawsuits: Users sue social networks
Expect this trend to continue, as users have bad experience with social network sites they’ll often want to sue those with the deepest pockets, and often that’s the social network managers.

Limitations: Facebook preserves user experience
By limiting the amount of invites an application can send to users, Facebook preserves the user experience and hopefully will prevent members from becoming inundated with a spammish experience.

Crime: Gangs Turn To Social Networking Sites To Recruit
Social netowrking sites are great for just that, meeting new people and communicating with them. This also goes true for gangs, according to this article that suggests that recruitment for criminal groups is now easier than ever.

Roles: What about the Community Manager
Melissa of Passenger gives some excellent information about her role as a community manager, a role that I prescribe to every company that wants to get involved with communities. It’s important to note however, that you can’t outsource all community management, get closer to customers, and be part of their community.

Verticals: Music integrates with Bebo, MySpace
Coordinating with SXSW Bebo launches a ‘find the next’ band campaign. A good fit considering their heavily media social network. There’s additional discussions on the deals between MySpace and a potential media partner.

Performance: Bebo struggles with downtime
The more popular the social network, the more outages, latency, and other scale issues we continue to see. Apparently, Bebo is no exception.

Leave a comment if this Digest was helpful, or if you’ve anything to add. Email me if you’ve suggestions for next week’s digest. In case you were wondering, I cover this space as an analyst.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 4:10 am and is filed under Digest, Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.