The Value of Social Networks
March 17th, 2008 | by Brad King |A few events occurred within the past 12 hours that set me thinking about the value of social networks.
First, Guy Kawasaki and I have been discussing the value of one of his latest creations, Alltop, which is a people-run aggregation site. He (and presumably a small team) scour the Web — and take input from readers — on the best sites of the day for specific content categories. I’ve asked one question — why is this more valuable than a personalized feed — and I’m still awaiting an answer. Although in fairness, Twitter lends itself to 140 character answers (unless you did the annoying thing I did, which was string 2-4 posts together).
Now, I can see some potential value in the service, but after watching a few of Kawasaki’s videos regarding start ups, I was looking for some specifics. I have no doubt he has them, I just haven’t received them yet.
Second…
I read this piece about the value of Twitter, a social network for people who text. It’s very easy to become completely lost with Twitter, particularly if you don’t manage the SMS alerts you get. If you’re following 100 people, within hours, you begin to ignore every message that comes in (well call it “drinking from the fire hose).
Now I find Twitter to be an amazing tool, and from what I learned at SXSWi this year, the company’s developers are working towards turning this into a business platform. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can certainly see why this would happen — money.
But it’s easier for me to see the value of Twitter than the value of Alltop. I have some theories — the top being my belief (and the research suggests) that autonomous grouping/creation lead to best social media sites.
Twitter offers that; Alltop doesn’t.
Of course, I also told the kind folks at Live36 — back in 2001 — that their business was clearly flawed, completely without merit and destined for the dotcom scrap heap. Now, the company has it’s site, a deal with Tivo and mobile providers.
