Analysis: Has the net grown out of 'poking'?

So does this mean that users are shunning the big, more frivolous social
networks in favour of more grown-up professional networks? Or are more
people simply looking for a new job?

In his blog, Robin Goad, research director at Hitwise, noted: "The site
is becoming more and more important to the recruitment industry: it
still doesn't send a huge amount of traffic their way, but the traffic
that it does send is high quality and on the increase."

To be fair, it also performs a useful networking function for its
members. "LinkedIn enables you to have a dialogue with the people in
your network and also the people in (your contacts') networks, which
from a practical standpoint is very difficult to do," explains Eyres. As
well as helping users maintain a contacts book, there's also a news
feature and Q&A section, so users can receive and give advice from their
first- and second-degree networks.

It's not the only online network targeting professionals, though. Viadeo
claims to be the only European social network to have been involved in
Google OpenSocial (the open standards-based platform for social
networks) from the start, and to have 1.8 million users in Europe.
Unlike LinkedIn, Viadeo is available in seven different languages -
although Eyres says LinkedIn will increase the number of languages
supported as the site expands further into Europe - and offers more of a
community aspect with 25,000 community forums, where users can discuss
different business-related topics.

The number of niche networks online is also proliferating. Recruitment
firm Monster kicked off 2008 with the acquisition of Affinity Labs, a
company that builds and owns several community sites including
PoliceLink and ArtBistro. Meanwhile, in the UK, Doctors.net.uk has
nearly 152,000 registered doctors on its site, about 20 per cent of whom
are active on the site every day.

Only doctors registered with the General Medical Council can join the
site and it's this exclusivity that Will McInnes, managing director of
social media agency Nixon McInnes, believes is attracting user interest
in niche and 'exclusive' sites. "We're talking to one of the biggest
publishers in the UK about plans for an invitation-only network for head
techies in very big multinational companiies," he reveals.

Anti-social networking

It was inevitable that there would be a backlash against the phenomenal
coverage given to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook
during the past couple of years - especially after the latter's poorly
executed launch of its advertising platform, Beacon. "Social networks
are a fantastic insight into what people are talking about and
interested in, but they have to be treated sensitively," stresses Ed
Riseman, general manager at The Big Group, which owns digital agency
big:interactive. "Beacon was pretty invasive of people's privacy and
took things a little too far."

Networking sites such as privatesocialnetworking.com (which does what it
says on the tin) and Piczo, a teenage social networking site with 28
million registered users worldwide, sell themselves in part on their
privacy controls. "Part of the reason I think we're successful is
because members feel they can publish a more open, honest and no-holds
barred account of what interests them in their lives, and share that
with a tightly knit group of people they typically know in the real
world," says Piczo's European managing director, Chris Seth. There's no
search functionality on Piczo, so members have to share urls in order to
find one another.

Badoo is the complete opposite in this respect, as anyone creating a
profile or blog on this social network largely does so to entertain the
other 12.5 million members. It's "more about showing off than
communicating with friends", explains director of communication, Lucy
George, with revenue solely coming from users paying one Euro (or
$1, depending on their location) to rise to the top of search
rankings. Consequently, the site doesn't need advertising on its site,
"and that's a real differentiator," adds George. "We realised we were on
to something and it's part of our philosophy."

Arguably, there's also been more interest in social publishing
platforms, such as Ning and Webjam, because they let users determine
what their network looks like. Webjam, for instance, has a module that
lets a user show different aspects of their profile to different
groups.

Gina Bianchini, chief executive and co-founder of Ning, agrees that
users increasingly want to keep their personal and professional lives
separate online. "In fact, the major limitation to the general,
one-size-fits-all social networks is that there are only very crude ways
of separating out the personal and the professional," she says. "That's
why we believe that there will be a world with millions of social
networks, for every conceivable purpose, both private and public,
uniquely tailored to people's interests and identities in different
contexts."

End of the line?

So does this mean the end is nigh for such networking behemoths as
Facebook? Far from it. Growth in Facebook might be slowing, but it's
still on the increase and the site already has a global membership
larger than the UK population. Looking to the future, Blake Chandlee,
Facebook's new commercial director, says the site - which he calls a
'social utility' not a social network because "we're a tool to help
people manage relationships" - will continue to look at "how we can
provide value to users so they can more efficiently manage their lives
and become closer to the people they want to invite into their own
world".

Another site building up its communication and sharing features is
Plaxo, which started life as an online contacts service. What makes
Plaxo's social network, Pulse, so interesting is its aim to open up its
network by pulling in 'people feeds' - updates from people in a user's
address book - from sites they're contributing to, such as Del.icio.us,
Digg, Flickr and MySpace. "We didn't try to just create another
destination on Pulse; we realised lots of people are already using a
variety of tools and services to express themselves," explains Joseph
Smarr, chief platform architect at Plaxo.

Moving away from communication and into the realm of online media
platforms are social networking sites MySpace and Bebo, which are using
entertainment and music to persuade people to spend time on their site.
The first series of Bebo's interactive drama, Kate Modern, attracted
more than 35 million views with an average of 250,000 views per episode,
for instance.

"Users are really spending time on Bebo and using content to project
their personalities, so for brand advertisers, it presents a number of
opportunities. A site that skews more on the communication angle will
have fewer opportunities to touch those users," claims Mark Charkin,
global vice-president of sales at Bebo.

The scale and reach of the large social networking sites certainly make
them a compelling destination for advertisers wanting to reach a wide
audience. But at the same time, the high volume of advertising inventory
available devalues its worth. "With social networking, a lot of
impressions and volumes are very low value because the users are
engaging in discussions, chats and everything that comes with social
networking, so it's not the best environment for advertisers to be
targeting and engaging with audiences," says Max Moore, vice-president
of publishing at AdJug, an online ad marketplace. "More niche social
networking probably gives more opportunity for advertisers to present an
ad in a more targeted way to the audience."

Tom Hings, director of brand marketing at Royal Mail, hasn't been
tempted to advertise on any of the online networks so far because, he
says, "there are few well-known brand advertisers currently maximising
social networking sites." But where he can see an opportunity is in
targeting SME business customers through a site such as LinkedIn. "It's
the perfect niche site for Royal Mail to consider because it has a very
highly targeted audience," he says.

That said, Facebook is one of several social networking sites trying to
offer more targeted advertising. Although marketers buying display
advertising on its site - which is handled by Microsoft - can't target
their campaign down to a user's interests, advertisers working with
Facebook to deliver ads through a user's news feeds, can refine their
campaign to this level.

Non-display

Potentially more exciting though, are the non-display forms of
advertising emerging on these sites - whether the appearance of Cadbury
Creme Egg in a Kate Modern storyline or the Facebook application from
big:interactive that lets Cadbury's Wispa fans create an 80s persona.
"You need to create interesting stories people want to get involved in
and the benefit of social networking is it enables that content to go
viral," believes Frances Dovey, interactive and emerging media manager
at Cadbury.

Even serious content can reach users on social networks if it piques
their interest. To engage and educate young people about the Aids
pandemic, for example, the British Red Cross worked with Enable
Interactive to create profile pages on Facebook, MySpace and Bebo,
featuring videos, polls, quizzes and a forum for users to share their
own stories. Over the six-week campaign, there were 39,000 social
networking profile views - most of which came from Bebo - "and we had a
very high level of engagement," recalls Dorothea Arndt, head of new
media at the charity.

Clearly, a good advertiser and its agency will use whatever networking
site best suits its campaign - whether that be a social networking site
with broad reach or a niche network with a devoted following. So, much
as in the offline world where people interact differently with different
groups of people, we can expect to see niche and professional networks
sit alongside larger social networks in the online sphere, rather than
displace them.

What's more, points out Hugo Burge, founder of HOWZAT Media and investor
in several networking sites including WAYN.com and TrustedPlaces.com:
"The nightmare of having multiple passwords is being dealt with by
movements like OpenSocial, which should make the interaction between
these networks more seamless, helping to ensure they all thrive."

Indeed, what might turn out to be the most interesting development this
year is the effect OpenSocial and the open standards drive for data
portability across sites will have on the way users interact with one
another online. The innovation this might produce will make for very
interesting watching indeed.

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES - THE BIG PLAYERS

Facebook Founded in February 2004, Facebook started life as a way for
Harvard undergrads to stay in touch with one another before extending to
anyone online. There are now more than 64 million active users and it is
the most popular photo-sharing website.

MySpace Bought by News International in 2006, MySpace calls itself "the
premier lifestyle portal for connecting with friends, discovering
popular culture and making a positive impact on the world." Users - of
whom there are estimated to be around 200 million - like it for its
music and entertainment content. It recently opened its platform to
enable developers to build applications on its site.

Bebo is a popular social networking site for 13 to 30 year olds, and has
more than 40 million worldwide users. Bebo describes itself as a
"platform for self-expression" and the network has become well known for
developing original online TV programming, such as Kate Modern. More
recently, it opened its platform to media owners and developers.

LinkedIn is an online network of more than 1 8 million professionals
worldwide. Its mantra is to make the professional more productive, and
to that end its aim is to make networking with contacts (and their
contacts) easier. It also boasts news and Q&A features, and generates
revenue from advertising, job posts, premium membership and corporate
subscriptions.