If you are the social media news hound types, you must have lapped up some of the interesting snippets on the the social networking juggernauts. For the benefit of the readers, let me make an attempt to quickly round up a clutch of the more interesting ones in my view.
Linked In was recently assessed to be the most valuable network and having crossed the 100 million accounts milestone, is well on the way to an IPO as well.
Twitter has tweeted its way to cross the 300 million registrations mark and also recently partnered with Yahoo Japan to integrate the tweets with various Yahoo services.
And not to mention Facebook, the big daddy of all social networks, having crossed the 500 million mark, has been growing steadily (although there was a drop in membership noted for the first time in the US recently).
When it comes to stickiness, a recent global study titled 'The S-Net: A study in social media usage and behaviour' found that 70 per cent of participants log on to Facebook at least once daily.
Up next was Twitter with a 58 per cent score followed by YouTube scoring 55 per cent.
The leading social networking (and micro-blogging platforms ) aside, one should not forget the list of other networks which have their own niche strong-holds like Friendster, Hi5, Bebo, Orkut, Habbo and not to forget, the erstwhile star My Space.
In my opinion, the status back home in Asia may not be a long shot away from what is transpiring globally as well, although there is a smattering of local leviathans such as Youku and RenRen in China. Finally, it is thought-provoking to note that the flag-bearer when it comes to ‘influencing purchase decisions’ is Twitter and not Facebook.
The emerging social networking stress
The grand panorama of social networking space suddenly triggers a thought in my mind – akin to the info overload and due to user generated content, aren’t we all already facing a ‘social networking stress’ that constantly threatens to fritter away valuable time?
There is a lot of emerging content about this new phenomenon christened ‘social media fatigue’ which is in simple terms, the stress that emanates from the race to catch up with all those tweets, Facebook liking, application activities and so forth.
Although this is an addictive and seemingly enjoyable and evolving lifestyle itself for the generation Z, there seems to be a high probability for a stress factor for a significant part of the other population in terms of the ‘pace of activity’ they need to maintain across personal social spheres.
So is there really head room for more?
My own little conversations with fellow colleagues, peers and general populace sent a clear “Oh no..Not more!!” and seems to suggest that there is a certain intimidation quotient that seems to be existent due to the levels of social media interaction that we tend to build up in our own lives.
In retrospect, it is not a misplaced statement that personally I find it a challenging task to keep up with my own humble activity map on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.
Recently I came across a few platforms that could be titled social networks, including Referral Key and Mix Tent, which seem to have a differentiated proposition and angles of thought compared to the incumbent goliaths.
P2P viral referrals is the key engine based on which the Referral Key network thrives and it is anchored on the core target audience of SMBs. A Referral Key user can solicit peers on Linked In to send you referrals for any specific objective you have in mind and thereby decide to give a guaranteed referral fee or reward to the successful referrer as well.
An extremely simply and straight proposition that finds huge traction in the fact that it uses the maturity of an SMB oriented network to drive meaningful transactions via referrals and this can be very clearly highlighted by the highly viral email subject line "Are you taking on any new clients?"
The tried and tested effectiveness of ‘word of mouth’ viral spread is what powers the core engine of this network.
Mix Tent has a very different persona compared to Referral Key whereby the network leverages the strength of Linked In and urges users to ‘rate’ their connections in the Linked In network. The rating process is based on choosing a pair of colleagues and asking the question as to who would you prefer to work with inside a particular industry vertical. And based on the ratings, the system then shoots out a mail to the individual indicating that a vote has been cast in your favour and that causes the addressee to be drawn in to the network.
Whether this is an effective model or not is yet unknown but the key point to be remembered is that there are new entrants in this arena who are smelling out the still unoccupied and unresolved needs that are existent and are quickly competing to occupy the space.
Does this really mean that such head room accommodate new mutants to be profitable?
I guess only time can give us the answer to that question but what is clear is that the power to ‘word of mouth’ is always king.
