[...] Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Sept 10, 2008 [...]

It’s hard for me to comment on other research firms analysis and findings, as I wasn’t part of it, but I’ll give my own reactions, but just from my personal side.

We’ve seen and heard about this before, in fact, social networks like Facebook have as well. Recently, they announced that they would rate and ‘tier’ applications to ensure they’re providing a useful experience. Therefore, expect social networks to crank up a notch of their user experience.

The important number to watch is how the increase in adoption still continues to rise –actions speak louder than words.

I’m with you however, we should question at what point does this become over-satured. The answer? when it stops adding value given how much we put in.

That doesn’t sound good for the future? Comments?

[...] Owyang's Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space for Sept 10, 2008 is up. Jeremy covers the social networking space an an analyst and if you read [...]

Best,
Aaron | @astrout

We agree actually, these are completely different classes of companies. The Wave I’m working on for Forrester (on Community Platform Vendors) will have just one class of companies –not mixed together.

I am going to disagree with you slightly on Dion’s list of white label providers (and in full disclosure, I work for one of the companies – Mzinga – that made it on the list). The reason I take issue is that I think it’s irresponsible to put Joomla and Drupal as the top two choices. Don’t get me wrong, they both provide great technology but 95% of companies are not well equipped to use them because 1) they requires a fair amount of customization to get it them to do what you want it to do (so all of a sudden, they aren’t so free) and 2) there are no services wrapped around it so you are left to figure out community for yourself. Dion tries to wave this away by saying “people will figure this out over time.” While true, do major brands want to risk damaging their image by stumbling along?

I know it’s important to balance cost with benefits but in this case, I think Dion has missed his mark, at least in the order of the list (he has a lot of other good companies like Lithium, KickApps, Jive, etc. on there). They are more in line with what many businesses need. And of course, there’s always us!

Best,
Aaron | @astrout