Unified Social Networks: A Case For Federation?

The consumer market has long been active in the area of social networking sites. Facebook is currently on a very strong media coverage power-curve at the moment. Xing is receiving a lot of media coverage as well (primarily in Europe). And now there appears to be some activity within Yahoo and Google (see article below). Enterprise software vendors are also focusing on the market opportunity represented by social networking. IBM Lotus Connections is perhaps the most anticipated offering by a traditional collaboration vendor. Microsoft has improved its MySite capability within Office SharePoint Server 2007. And BEA is also positioning itself to take a run at the social networking space as well (from a corporate perspective). Best-of-breed vendors are also in the mix. Contact Networks is a vendor focused on the application of social networking in a business context. Connectbeam can help uncover connections by combining tags, social bookmarks with employee profile pages.

Given my earlier post that "digital life" eventually trumps "digital work", it seems likely that the only way for these systems to be truly valuable for those that participate in them is for these sites to support some type of federation model that enables certain content and data elements to be exposed and/or actually shared across social networks. If employees are on Facebook (or another "digital life" social network site), they are not going to be enthusiastic about re-creating their persona on Lotus Connections (or some other "digital work" social network site) to satisfy company strategists. This really strikes me as an unnatural act. People should not have to artificially separate their digital life (and its associated network of relationship connections) from their digital work (and its associated network of relationship connections).

This raises the issue (and importance) of identity management, security and some type of federation model as foundational building blocks for any effort at unified social networks.

Yahoo Mosh

We don’t know much yet, other than the project exists, it will be launched at mosh.yahoo.com and is being called a “new cool social network product” within Yahoo. No screen shots are available yet. See our earlier post for more.

Google Socialstream

Google Operating System is reporting that Google is sponsoring a project at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute to “rethink and reinvent online social networking.” The project is called Socialstream. Click on the image for a larger view.

The project goal is to “create a system for users to seamlessly share, view, and respond to many types of social content across multiple networks.”

Google, Yahoo Both Working On Next Generation Social Networks

An Introduction to the Project

Socialstream is the result of a Google-sponsored capstone project in the Master's program at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. This project was guided by three goals that built upon each other:

Initial Task: Rethink and reinvent online social networking

Refined Focus: Discover the user needs related to social networking and explore how a unified social network service can enhance their experience.

Prototype Goal: Create a system for users to seamlessly share, view, and respond to many types of social content across multiple networks.

Directed to help improve the online community orkut, the project's scope was not to simply redesign the interface. Our team considered how online social networking could bring greater value to users, especially for ages above twenty. After initial brainstorming and research, we chose to focus on the effects of a new model for online social networking: a unified social network that, as a service, provides social data to many other applications. Our user research examined needs related to online as well as offline social networking and considered how they related to a unified social network service model. Through this user research we identified a set of archetypes that represent common behavior patterns that existed across multiple study participants and also formulated a summarized list of their high level needs.

Socialstream is our response to these needs; it is the result of a rigorous user-centered design process that involved formal research and evaluation with over 30 participants.

Socialstream

Comments

[Jay Deragon]

The noise and actions that lead to convergence is heating up fast. Just consider the last thirty days of announcements: Google, Facebook, Linkedin, MSN, IBM and others ( I can hardly keep up anymore). Soon it won't matter which existing network "you" think is better rather value will be created by how you manage "your network". As more and more closed systems open, it begins to interact more directly with other existing systems, and therefore acquires all the value of those systems. Soon we will all be overwhelmed with an abundance of value proposition in which you'll need to decide how and what to use in "your" network to meet your personal and professional aims. You will soon become your own aggregator of networks, of relationships, of information, of knowledge and last but not least...of VALUE.

Technology provides the means, relationships provide the value.

The Relationship Economy is now, not when, being built by individuals who learn how to maximize the value of relationships by optimizing technology. We'll need to forget what we've been using and think "how" to adapt to the convergence of means which enables us to maximize value. We need to ReThink our methods and ReShape the means so we can individually and collectively capture the most value. Are you ready? What is your plan? How will you adapt?

When is Now: What say you?

I'll be publishing a lot more on this at my blog later today. If you want more go to http://jayderagon.com/blog