The blogosphere seems intent on finishing the year on a social note. I’m seeing plenty of posts on LinkedIn, ZeroDegrees, Spoke and continued tirades over what Ryze, Tribe and Friendster provide or don’t. Yes it’s an area I’ve read about and have followed closely all year. So in the closing moments I’ll say I don’t think any of these are real businesses. None of these are the eBbay of social capital. Some may have important functionalities that may add up to a business sometime in the future. However those that use $10 subscription rates for current functionality levels can forget it. They are all too expensive. It’s cheaper to get in the Yellow Pages.
Early in the year I found myself writing about identity and sharing human profiles to thinking through circles of friends and the impact of actions on branding and behavior. I’ve explored almost every one of these software applications as they have come along. There is not yet one pieces of software from this genre that I get real enjoyment from. Each one I can learn the system and get it to do a small number of things. I can get new introductions, however the people that really count and my long time referees aren’t on the system and I’ve given up trying to get them there. In the end my blog and strategies that I execute around it are a better time investment for networking to new connections.
Many of the social networking services provide useful functionalities (dating - matching is really separate to my comments here) however none of them provide the type of product / service that is going to be a big time winner. They are high maintenance for the most part and fail to integrate well into the day to day work that we do. Then there is trust too. Upload your outlook address book etc… They are all useful experiments and many of their features will be built into corporate systems. Yet, I believe the majority are barking up the wrong tree.
Here’s some top of mind reasons why.
So where does that lead? Right bang on the doorstep of the phone system. It’s where all the money is, and where the above is likely to be most disruptive. Vonage’s new softphone like Skype is just another indicator.
RSS 2.0 
Stuart,
I completely agree. Recently I posted a message to the SPM Discussion eGroup http://groups.yahoo.com/group/softwareproductmarketingdiscussion titled: “Social Networking Sites = More Work for Me! Am I a Luddite?” http://www.typaldos.blogspot.com/2003_12_03_typaldos_archive.html#107047413766333367 in the hopes of getting some positive feedback on these various sites. But overall the discussion list comments were consistent with my experience.
I am very interested in what you and your readers think of our SPM/ProfGuilds ResumeBlog project — go to http://www.resumeblog.com to create a ResumeBlog and http://www.cynthia-typaldos.blogspot.com to see my ResumeBlog as an example and traverse the links to other ResumeBlogs. We are trying to create social software from free services and tools because 1) we are an organization with no funding and run by volunteers, besides the free stuff is pretty darn good! and 2) the members can completely own their job/career data and port it from system to system.
Cynthia