Lets define the terms a little bit. When one of my actual partners at sixjumps.com came up with the buzzword "Social Networks" last year (October 2007) telling me that searchengines even the most powerful ones like Google will be dead in the web 3.0 era, I did not really understand what he was talking about.
I have been as a professional on the Internet since 1996 and since I have left Germany and went to live in Spain in 1999 I felt and feel that if I was 3-4 years behind.
Since I left LBI Spain one and a half months ago I investigated about Web 2.0 and joined all kind of Social Networks (MySpace, facebook, Hi5, Xing, Linkedin and Twitter) in order to understand how they work, what makes them so interesting to millions of users and what the business model around these Community Websites are.
As a result, I was so convinced about the power of Web based relationships and sites that enable a simple, communication based human interaction sharing ideas, comments on services and products, family and leisure photos, audio and videos, that me and my partners decided to create a company dedicated to provide marketing and branding services to companies that would like to profit from these "Social Networks".
sixjumps Consulting was born.
As my background is Marketing - I studied economics at the University of Trier (Germany) with focus on Marketing - I was always very interested in how the Internet will change strategic and operative Marketing.
Social Network (ing)So after this "brief" introduction lets define Social Networks. As we are living
in Web 2.0 era lets consult Wikipedia first to learn about Social Networks:
A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes. The resulting structures are often very complex.
Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.
In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant ties between the nodes being studied. The network can also be used to determine the social capital of individual actors. These concepts are often displayed in a social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.
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Source:
WikipediaAs we now understand what social Networks are, lets have a look on Social Networking.
Social Networking/ Social Network ServicesTaking the same first step as for Social Networks and checking at Wikipedia we learn:
A social network service uses software to build online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.
Most services are primarily web based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on. Social networking has revolutionized the way we communicate and share information with one another in today's society. Various social networking websites are being used by millions of people everyday on a regular basis and it now seems that social networking is a part of everyday life.
The main types of social networking services are those which contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and recommender systems linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with MySpace and Facebook being the most widely used in North America,[1] Bebo[2], MySpace, Skyrock Blog , Facebook and Hi5 in parts of Europe,[3], Orkut and Hi5 in South America and Central America,[4] Friendster, Orkut and CyWorld in Asia and the Pacific Islands.[5] Le Monde provided a detailed map of popularity, January 14, 2008. [6]
There have been some attempts to standardize these services to avoid the need to duplicate entries of friends and interests(see the FOAF standard and the Open Source Initiative), but this has led to some concerns about privacy.
In this list I was missing Skyblog for France and only France - again it seems that France is a very particular market as french is most important for its users. I would like to include the
link to Le Monde's article with the world map of popular Social Networks.
Now, after understanding Social Networks and social Network Services lets try to understand what Social shopping means.
Social ShoppingAs an introduction I would like to share an article about Social Shopping published on eMarketer in September 2006:
Does Social Networking Mean Social Shopping?
SEPTEMBER 29, 2006
'Hey, guys! You won't believe the great deal I just got on Amazon.com'
The numbers are by no means definitive, but the inferences to be drawn from last month's Hitwise tracking figures have to have a lot of online marketers wondering, "What if...?"
Marketers expect users to go to search engines — and then to other sites for shopping and buying information — and Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search are the top three search engines for doing just that.
But in addition, Hitwise reports that the social networking site MySpace.com accounted for 2.53% of the upstream visits to shopping and classifieds sites for the same time period. That is up from 1.28% six months ago — and would place the site fourth on the list above if it were a search engine.
According to Hitwise, the shopping and classifieds sites that benefited the most from MySpace visits were eBay, Amazon, Gateway, Wal-Mart and Craigslist.
"Search is a proven method of acquiring traffic and Google is the leader in driving online retail site traffic," Bill Tancer of Hitwise told MediaPost. "But with the growth of MySpace and others, online retailers should expand their focus beyond search to consider social networking sites as a source of additional traffic."
That may be an idea whose time is coming, quickly.
For more on this subject, read eMarketer's Social Network Marketing: Carving Out Some MySpace report.
Source: eMarketer.com
social shopping means simply that trusted individuals within Social Networking Services recommend products and services and are top influencers of all phases in the buying cycle .
Buying cycle:
Friends, family members and colleagues buy, use and comment on products and are trusted peers when it comes to a decison to buy or not buy a prodcut or service. Blogs, Forums and Chats enable that kind of communication via Web but don't forget that having a beer, making sports with your team, having coffee wit a colleague ore making a phone call are other and still most important touchpoints for word of mouth communication.
