Web 2.0

The advent of web 2.0 has introduced a highly interactive and user-friendly interface for people to connect with like minded individuals. Now, it’s all about blogs, social networks and community sites. Lately; it’s very obvious that these next generation sites have moved from the tag of exploring people and pals to a powerful marketing tool. For instance, eMarketer says social networking sites will draw $900 million in advertising dollars during 2007, and predicts that number will rise to $2.5 billion by 2011. In India alone, the Internet and Mobile association predicts that India’s net user base will touch 100 million by 2008. These statistics second the authentic and powered growth of these networking sites. Despite of having its own oddments, The TNL weblog explores some of the basic reasons for their powerful growth…

Basic human need to connect

Most of all, though, human beings are social creatures. As such, the root of all success from social networking sites is based on a need to connect and expand connections. For most of history, connections were largely limited by geographical or economic considerations. Social networks allow people to expand their connections around interests. This first appeared with the rise of Usenet and bulletin boards, where members formed communities around specific interests and has now expanded into the social networking realm, where people can find out more about people who are most like them.

Basic human need to share

The proliferation of blogs has shown that people love to share their opinion. The proliferation of the open source movement shows that some people love to share their expertise. Social networks appeal to the altruistic side of people by allowing them to share their connection and introduce their friends to other friends.

Enhanced Knowledge

When used properly, social networks can be a great way to enhance knowledge. Tapping into one’s social network can allow for people to fill an information gap if members of their extended social network have deep subject matter expertise in a certain area. At the current time, few social networking sites have used that capability but, I believe this is one of the most useful aspects of social networking sites.

Online Identity

For some people, social networks personal pages are the only place where people maintain an identity. Some, like MySpace, have capitalized on that effect by providing tools that allow enhancing those profiles in ways that make them indistinct from personal sites, beyond the fact that the URL is on the service instead of being a personal one.

Viral Nature

They key to social networks quickly moving up in size is their viral nature. Because people expand their network, they invite their friends. And those friends, in turn, invite others. The viral nature of a new social network plays an important role in making it succeed. Some networks have taken the model one step further by being “by invitation only”. Initially, this represents a certain level of exclusivity. This exclusivity breaks down, though, if the social networks do not have a mechanism to slow down or limit the number of new invitations going out. All it takes to tear down that sense of exclusivity is for one person to start inviting hordes of people.