Social Networks
on Line56.com
by Michael Brown (Partech International), June 02, 2006
Social networks have become ways to navigate and personalize the (business) Web; sales and marketing professionals, take note
A social network is in its simplest form a mapping of who knows whom. Each of us has a web of personal and professional relationships, and these relationships vary in degree of strength and familiarity.
The notion of mapping webs of people first formally appeared on the Internet in 1995 with the launch of Classmates.com, a site dedicated to enabling high school classmates to re-connect and find each other. According to Wikipedia, other sites expanded on this idea of who knows whom, but it was not until 2003 that social networks became truly mainstream with the advent of Friendster. This Web site enabled teenagers and young adults to meet old friends, discover new acquaintances and track and update their circle of friends on a unique personal Web page.
The popularity of these sites has grown rapidly, and today there are more than 200 social networking sites on the Web. In fact, in 2005, MySpace received more page views than Google and was acquired by NewsCorp for $580 million dollars, and MySpace now boasts more than 72 million user accounts.
Social Networks as New Form of Search and Navigation
Despite their origins as an online destination to assemble one's friends and make new personal acquaintances, social networks have evolved to become nothing less than a core navigation paradigm for the Internet. Though some Internet social networking sites are still primarily destination sites to socialize, the social network has become an example for tailoring a search and personalizing the Web. Today, social networking functionality has become an important component of many, many Web sites, not just those dedicated to making friends and dating. This same functionality sits alongside keyword search or Google's page rank algorithm as an important new way to search for people and discover valuable media and content on the Internet.
Search for People -- Both Personal and Professional
We all know that social networking enables personal search, however, social networks also enable search for people beyond friendships and dating. There is a very rich and growing use for professional social networking in the enterprise, particularly in two important areas: employee hiring and complex selling. Hiring excellent employees for one's business can be extremely laborious and expensive. Further, the process of choosing a star manager based on an interview or resume screen alone is imprecise at best. Social networking leverages the power of personal relationship networks to enable employers to seek recommendations of talented potential hires from people that they already know and trust. Not only do these recommendations reduce the risk of hiring a "lemon" employee, the social network unearths candidates for positions that are not actively seeking jobs. These "passive" job seekers are often the most desirable candidates (versus unemployed workers), and today are inaccessible to hiring managers without the benefit of an executive search firm or the social network to identify these candidates. Both Doostang and LinkedIn, two startups, harness the power of social networks to identify top quality passive job candidates for employee hiring.
Social networks also play an important role to aid sales and marketing professionals. Complex enterprise sales often require interaction with multiple people at a target company. There can be multiple decision makers and influencers in an enterprise buying decision. Some social network companies recognize that connecting with the right person in an organization can greatly increase the likelihood of closing a transaction. Companies such as Spoke Software (a Partech portfolio company) and Jigsaw enable sales and marketing professionals to identify the key decision makers inside a potential customer organization and connect with those people to influence the sale process in order to reach a successful outcome.
Media and Content Discovery -- Find out What's Good from People Who Have Expertise or Share Your Taste
High penetration of broadband Internet; the prevalence of portable consumer electronics devices, like the digital camera and the Apple iPod; and the proliferation of online media publishing Web sites and tools have led to an explosion of multimedia content on the Internet in recent years. From television, to video, to music, to photos, to text, consumers face millions of content options to consume online. So where does one begin? How does one separate the wheat from the chaff? With the explosion of content comes an explosion of choices, most of which won't appeal to a given individual. Personalization on the Internet means, in part, marrying the right content with the right person, so that the Latin jazz lover discovers the perfect new music track, and the comedy lover uncovers a video gem that a teenager uploaded onto the Web in a foreign country thousands of miles away. Even with traditional navigation techniques, like keyword search and taxonomies to organize media, there is so much media on the Internet, basic search and retrieval capabilities often fail to connect a piece of content with the community that will most value that content. That's where social networking comes into play.
No doubt there is someone we each know that sees all the new release movies, visits local nightclubs in search of new music groups and reads books voraciously. Each of us has an expert (or more likely two or three) that we trust for recommendations for media or introductions to new music/movies/books we're likely to enjoy. Social networking in the context of media discovery is a new search model for exploring content through the eyes and ears of trusted friends and acquaintances. Sites like Last.fm, Pandora, and NetFlix all enable users to explore content by discovering what other people recommend. With Last.fm, a community dedicated to music listening and discovery, I can search for others who share my passion for three or four lesser-known artists and then explore what additional music these people enjoy. After all, if a handful of people like the same obscure artists I like, I will probably enjoy listening to some of their other favorite artists. This example holds true for any type of media. By navigating through the social network, I can uncover micro-communities of people who share my tastes and through these communities discover more media that I'm likely to enjoy.
User-Generated Content and the Social Network
User-generated content has become a hot topic of recent with the enormous success of sites like Wikipedia and YouTube. These sites have strong network effects, are very sticky, are highly scalable, require little in the way of paid content creation and create millions of page views of monetizable advertising inventory. On a user-generated content site, viewers can navigate by content/topic area of interest, or once a viewer has discovered savory content contributed by a particular user, the viewer can begin to navigate additional content contributed by the same contributor.
For example, on a local market review site like Yelp, users review restaurants, dentists, doctors, and other services that are of a local or regional nature. Not only do users review the various local hotspots and vendors, users are creating the content by adding new vendors to the system, writing reviews and sharing their reviews with friends. I may be searching Yelp to find a top-notch car mechanic in San Francisco. When I read Tom's review of a certain car mechanic, I may find his review so insightful, funny or compelling, that I may click on Tom's profile and begin to explore additional content that Tom has posted to the website. In other words, while my navigation of the site started as one based on taxonomy (in this case a search for a car mechanic) it shifted to an exploration of the website through the social network, through Tom's contributions to the site. I may send Tom a compliment and request to add Tom to my Yelp friends' list so that I can get to know Tom better or receive alerts from the website when Tom posts new contributions to the site that I may enjoy reading.
At Partech, we're more focused on building Internet businesses that incorporate social networking as one important component of a company's information strategy. Building a business to better qualify leads for sales and marketing executives is interesting to us. Employing social networking in this context makes sense as part of the strategy. Helping match people with content in the form of music, movies, books, or news via the Web is a worthwhile pursuit and potentially a profitable one.
Michael Brown, Principal with Partech International, has been with the firm since 2001 and has been active in a number of Partech's investments in consumer Internet and digital media. Partech International is a global venture capital firm with offices in the U.S., Europe and Israel and $850M under active management. For more information on Partech International, please visit www.partechinternational.com.
by Michael Brown (Partech International), June 02, 2006
Social networks have become ways to navigate and personalize the (business) Web; sales and marketing professionals, take note
A social network is in its simplest form a mapping of who knows whom. Each of us has a web of personal and professional relationships, and these relationships vary in degree of strength and familiarity.The notion of mapping webs of people first formally appeared on the Internet in 1995 with the launch of Classmates.com, a site dedicated to enabling high school classmates to re-connect and find each other. According to Wikipedia, other sites expanded on this idea of who knows whom, but it was not until 2003 that social networks became truly mainstream with the advent of Friendster. This Web site enabled teenagers and young adults to meet old friends, discover new acquaintances and track and update their circle of friends on a unique personal Web page.
The popularity of these sites has grown rapidly, and today there are more than 200 social networking sites on the Web. In fact, in 2005, MySpace received more page views than Google and was acquired by NewsCorp for $580 million dollars, and MySpace now boasts more than 72 million user accounts.
Social Networks as New Form of Search and Navigation
Despite their origins as an online destination to assemble one's friends and make new personal acquaintances, social networks have evolved to become nothing less than a core navigation paradigm for the Internet. Though some Internet social networking sites are still primarily destination sites to socialize, the social network has become an example for tailoring a search and personalizing the Web. Today, social networking functionality has become an important component of many, many Web sites, not just those dedicated to making friends and dating. This same functionality sits alongside keyword search or Google's page rank algorithm as an important new way to search for people and discover valuable media and content on the Internet.
Search for People -- Both Personal and Professional
We all know that social networking enables personal search, however, social networks also enable search for people beyond friendships and dating. There is a very rich and growing use for professional social networking in the enterprise, particularly in two important areas: employee hiring and complex selling. Hiring excellent employees for one's business can be extremely laborious and expensive. Further, the process of choosing a star manager based on an interview or resume screen alone is imprecise at best. Social networking leverages the power of personal relationship networks to enable employers to seek recommendations of talented potential hires from people that they already know and trust. Not only do these recommendations reduce the risk of hiring a "lemon" employee, the social network unearths candidates for positions that are not actively seeking jobs. These "passive" job seekers are often the most desirable candidates (versus unemployed workers), and today are inaccessible to hiring managers without the benefit of an executive search firm or the social network to identify these candidates. Both Doostang and LinkedIn, two startups, harness the power of social networks to identify top quality passive job candidates for employee hiring.
Social networks also play an important role to aid sales and marketing professionals. Complex enterprise sales often require interaction with multiple people at a target company. There can be multiple decision makers and influencers in an enterprise buying decision. Some social network companies recognize that connecting with the right person in an organization can greatly increase the likelihood of closing a transaction. Companies such as Spoke Software (a Partech portfolio company) and Jigsaw enable sales and marketing professionals to identify the key decision makers inside a potential customer organization and connect with those people to influence the sale process in order to reach a successful outcome.
Media and Content Discovery -- Find out What's Good from People Who Have Expertise or Share Your Taste
High penetration of broadband Internet; the prevalence of portable consumer electronics devices, like the digital camera and the Apple iPod; and the proliferation of online media publishing Web sites and tools have led to an explosion of multimedia content on the Internet in recent years. From television, to video, to music, to photos, to text, consumers face millions of content options to consume online. So where does one begin? How does one separate the wheat from the chaff? With the explosion of content comes an explosion of choices, most of which won't appeal to a given individual. Personalization on the Internet means, in part, marrying the right content with the right person, so that the Latin jazz lover discovers the perfect new music track, and the comedy lover uncovers a video gem that a teenager uploaded onto the Web in a foreign country thousands of miles away. Even with traditional navigation techniques, like keyword search and taxonomies to organize media, there is so much media on the Internet, basic search and retrieval capabilities often fail to connect a piece of content with the community that will most value that content. That's where social networking comes into play.
No doubt there is someone we each know that sees all the new release movies, visits local nightclubs in search of new music groups and reads books voraciously. Each of us has an expert (or more likely two or three) that we trust for recommendations for media or introductions to new music/movies/books we're likely to enjoy. Social networking in the context of media discovery is a new search model for exploring content through the eyes and ears of trusted friends and acquaintances. Sites like Last.fm, Pandora, and NetFlix all enable users to explore content by discovering what other people recommend. With Last.fm, a community dedicated to music listening and discovery, I can search for others who share my passion for three or four lesser-known artists and then explore what additional music these people enjoy. After all, if a handful of people like the same obscure artists I like, I will probably enjoy listening to some of their other favorite artists. This example holds true for any type of media. By navigating through the social network, I can uncover micro-communities of people who share my tastes and through these communities discover more media that I'm likely to enjoy.
User-Generated Content and the Social Network
User-generated content has become a hot topic of recent with the enormous success of sites like Wikipedia and YouTube. These sites have strong network effects, are very sticky, are highly scalable, require little in the way of paid content creation and create millions of page views of monetizable advertising inventory. On a user-generated content site, viewers can navigate by content/topic area of interest, or once a viewer has discovered savory content contributed by a particular user, the viewer can begin to navigate additional content contributed by the same contributor.
For example, on a local market review site like Yelp, users review restaurants, dentists, doctors, and other services that are of a local or regional nature. Not only do users review the various local hotspots and vendors, users are creating the content by adding new vendors to the system, writing reviews and sharing their reviews with friends. I may be searching Yelp to find a top-notch car mechanic in San Francisco. When I read Tom's review of a certain car mechanic, I may find his review so insightful, funny or compelling, that I may click on Tom's profile and begin to explore additional content that Tom has posted to the website. In other words, while my navigation of the site started as one based on taxonomy (in this case a search for a car mechanic) it shifted to an exploration of the website through the social network, through Tom's contributions to the site. I may send Tom a compliment and request to add Tom to my Yelp friends' list so that I can get to know Tom better or receive alerts from the website when Tom posts new contributions to the site that I may enjoy reading.
At Partech, we're more focused on building Internet businesses that incorporate social networking as one important component of a company's information strategy. Building a business to better qualify leads for sales and marketing executives is interesting to us. Employing social networking in this context makes sense as part of the strategy. Helping match people with content in the form of music, movies, books, or news via the Web is a worthwhile pursuit and potentially a profitable one.
Michael Brown, Principal with Partech International, has been with the firm since 2001 and has been active in a number of Partech's investments in consumer Internet and digital media. Partech International is a global venture capital firm with offices in the U.S., Europe and Israel and $850M under active management. For more information on Partech International, please visit www.partechinternational.com.posted by Gripplly at
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