Social Networking Interconnects

To date, most social networks have been silos. You go to MySpace or Facebook or LinkedIn to connect to your social networks. But these social networks don't really exist outside of those domains, except via email alerts.

Longtime readers know that I've been a huge fan of MyBlogLog because it allows me to create a social network around my blog (which is now 674 members and growing every day).

I've also been a huge fan of last.fm because it connects to my iTunes and uses my music listening habits to form my social network.

And, of course, I have last.fm and MyBlogLog widgets on my left sidebar to connect my blog with these services.

But in the past 24 hours, I've taken it a step further. I've added last.fm and MyBlogLog to my MySpace page. Now you can also join my MySpace community via MyBlogLog instead of via friending me on MySpace. That's pretty cool and is the latest feature in a string of new features that MyBlogLog is rolling out. You can also see my most recently played tracks on my MySpace page via last.fm, something I've had on this blog for the past year.

Steve Poland talked about this over the weekend at TechCrunch and called last.fm and MyBlogLog his "favorite web services". I agree with Steve, they are both doing some very interesting things.

Some people think of last.fm and MyBlogLog as "social networking for adults". And I agree with that. But I don't think that's going to be the case much longer. Last.fm has taken off among my kids, the Facebook and MySpace crowd. They love checking out what their friends are listening to, recommending new stuff, and listening to neighbor and similar artist radio.

The question is whether MyBlogLog will be next. Will the teen crowd decide that a "portable" MyBlogLog community is better than their friends list on MySpace? Will the ability to see who is reading your MySpace profile page at that moment be a hit with the MySpace crowd? Not sure. But it's possible.

I do know one thing. MyBlogLog seems to be taking off. The number of contact requests I am getting via MyBlogLog is going up every day. I don't think the MySpace widget is the reaason, but it surely doesn't hurt.

What this all points to is the de-portalization of social networks (hate to use that word again, can't someone come up with something better?). We are seeing services build interconnects between social networks. That's an important trend and I think we are just at the beginning of it.

Comments

[COD]

I just sent you a friends request via Myspace. I felt bad for you since you only have 7 friends there ;) I'm guessing the list of your readers with Myspace pages is probably a very short list!

[John Dodds]

What is the benefit to you of having these 674 social network members?

[Dr. Rod King]

Fred,
I enjoyed your comments above, especially about the need for more networking of social networks or what I prefer to call the development of "meta-social networks:" a social network of social networks. I believe it's an inevitable trend. And innovators like MyBlogLog, who facilitate meta-social networking or the building of networks within networks, will be instrumental for the exponential growth of social networks. I expect to see more players offering tools that enhance communication between different social networks. There is an innate desire or 'instinct' for everything to connect to everything. And I believe, nothing will stop the evolution towards 'singular communication:' where everything is one and everything connects to everything. And this brings us up to another point in your post: "de-portalization."
I actually like the term "de-portalization" and the bad news is that I don't think it will go away! I've thought about alternative words like "de-chunking," "decentralization," and "widgetization." However, they do not convey the same meaning as presented in the seminal article mentioning "de-portalization." For me, the next best alternative is "de-chunking." Regarding the apparent 'rigidity' of the Yahoo portal, the basic problem is inadequate scalability of their portal. (I have a solution but I shall leave that for another post!) If Yahoo's portal was highly scalable, it could be more easily "de-portalized." The portal is not dead or even dying. The way forward for Yahoo as well as other Internet companies is to develop easily scalable Internet portals. That may very well be the next big thing on the Internet.

Best regards,
Rod.

[Daniele]

What about "widgetization of portals" ?

[David Henderson]

Sorry Fred, I couldn't figure out how to track back to this.

Please check this post:
Portalization Around User Attention
http://www.blogs.dhenderson.com/David_Henderson/?p=213

[Michael]

Funny, as I was just listening to "The Wall:"
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.

Tear down the Wall, Fred! ; )

[Fraser]

disaggregated social network (DSN) seems to fit nicely.

dis·ag·gre·gate Pronunciation (ds-gr-gt)
v.tr.
To divide into constituent parts.
v.intr.
To break up or break apart.

It's the disaggregation, the breaking apart, of social networks enabling the pieces to then be aggregated (think Umair's microchunking and reconstructors) across all of your communities (think last.fm, your blog, etc.) that's exciting.

[gustaf]

I think Myspace has a strong incentive not to support visit-tracking services like last.fm have if you signup for the premium service.

The reason is simple, if you know that visits on someones myspace page is not anonymous you're browsing of profiles will decrease, especially repeat use (like checking someones profile everyday) will go down. that will hurt myspace's ad revenues.

as far as I know, widgets on myspace don't allow you do set cookies and myspace have been hitting down on some of the tracking services.

[Niki Scevak]

I think the definition is a little blurry here but isn't this more 'social analytics'?

When a friend stops by and comments, that is a lot more meaningful from an author's point of view than looking at your google analytics account to see 300 read your blog the day before. So MyBlogLog is almost humanifying the later.

The human face of analytics.

[Bill Olen]

Social Networks Going Bedouin.

[Dorrian]

There was a good discussion of distributed or decentralized social networks at SXSW last year (Danah Boyd, Jonas Luster, Tantek Celik). Decentralization seems to be a better word.

[Ken Berger]

It's all about going back to the edge.

How about "Edgecation". The internet is most certainly getting more edgecated.

[Andy]

Instead of "decentralized" or "deportalized" I say we just call them "open".

"An open social networking service"....ya, that sounds right.

[Nick U.]

The need for open sourced social networks will continue to increase as niche players enter the market. Niche players like eons.com and joga.com can offer their users so much more than the broader social networking sites like MySpace. Like Guy says, "They're not afraid to polarize people." Users will participate in several of these niche social networks and the need for a decentralized grand social network will increase. I discuss this in a blog post if you're interested.

[Matt]

It's an interested trend in data portability that we put into our concept early on. The problem with many of these social networking services is that even with de-portalization, the services alone cannot provide much of a value proposition to an end user.

The, "hey look I'm on MySpace" factor has definately worn off and as customers will demand more data portability, social networks will be trouble for advertising revenues on the services.

Let people aggregate and innovate with their information spanning existing networks and incorporate features that make it easier to be more productive and leverage the established social relationships. Throw in some profile identity management so people can keep a close eye on what they share with others (i.e. MySpace content versus LinkedIn content).

Matt

[Turker]

I find this pretty interesting because this widget does more than just showing you who were on your Myspace page. You say:

"Now you can also join my MySpace community via MyBlogLog instead of via friending me on MySpace. "

This is where I think this widget becomes more important. If one can build his/her community, or circle of friends outside Myspace (or any other social network), he/she is less locked in. Building the community on a social network is an important commitment.It is easier to carry your data around with you nowadays, but carrying around your community is not that easy. I am thinking, a widget like this may have the potential to make it easier.

[alan patrick]

Hi

Interesting post....I have 3 initial thoughts on this:

(i) MetaNets - absolutely - all the research implies we socialise via scale free nets and the Internet is similarly constructed, so it maps to our approaches

(ii)MyBlogLog - its just the next stage of how to build a MetaNet....5 years ago it was Groups when email was the main form of comms, after that we had our IM and SN communities. Now its blogging, and using an email Group for our communities is possible but soooo passe ;)

(iii)I prefer Pandora - don't quite know how, but it plays more of what I like.

Oh, and De-Portalization - umm...does not the New Hub then become the de facto Portal - ie is it Re-Portalisation? And are you Im-portalising your friends to MySpace, or Ex-portlaising them from MyBlogLog :D

[Evren]

Building on Ken Berger's point, they can be called open garden social networking (opposite of walled garden).

[Ryan Morin]

I'm a dedicated user of MyBlogLog. But I don't think its yet a form of "social networking for adults." I'd take a step backward and call it "social networking for bloggers."

As bloggers, we need a place to tell the world about our writing, similar to how teenie-boppers need a place to be mallrats, and bands need an audience to listen to their music. So bloggers go to MyBlogLog, the teenie-boppers spend hours on MySpace, and the bands post their tracks on last.fm. But all of these users remain isolated and unconnected to the greater Internet beyond these interest-focused communities. They end up hanging out with other bloggers, teenie-boppers, music lovers and never quite capture the interests of someone who could care less about the content produced by their own communities.

I think the concept of social networking is rising above the idea of users establishing a home in a few web communities and moving into the "meta-social" network described here. An interesting thought!

[David Evans]

I've been a MBL user forever. It's social aspect reminds me of Last.fm in that I never go there but its tracking my itunes plays via audioscrobbler. It also reminds me of delicious, which I'm finding easy to put data into, but difficult getting it out. This behind the scenes and one-way attention is what's keeping these services from really taking off.

[California Dan]

I have tried and tried but I just don't get "MySpace" or most of the others for that matter. I have been blogging since 1999 and have tried pretty much every tool out there...

My hang up with MySpace is two-fold: first, the sites are generally butt-ugly and difficult to navigate. Second, the intellect of most of the users and people who are allegedly "My Friends" is questionable. On my MySpace page, when I tried it out, I had all sorts of folks dropping by to say, "Kick Ass" and other assorted words of wisdom. After a few months I realized that "My Friends" weren't my friends at all; they were people that I wouldn't dare interact with in a true "social" setting...

My question for you Fred is why have a MySpace or FaceBook page if you have a blog such as A VC? Is there really traffic being driven here? Is there enough content on those pages to push folks here? I'm not following the rationale...

Dan

[hockeydino]

I don't get it. How does this add friends to your myspace account? You are just putting the widget in your myspace section..it will show your myblog users, but how does that add myspace friends?

Someone hook a brotha up! email me
hockeydino @ g m a i l .c o m

[KG]

The re-naming discussion of "deportalization" is really interesting.

Pinging off of the comments of Bill Olen ("Social Networks Going Bedouin") and Dorrian ("distributed or decentralized social networks"), this jumped to mind:
"nomadic social networks" or "nomadic networks".

This incorporates their portability, their tendencies to roam from place to place, and the people/social/cultural aspects.

[alan patrick]

Well, I read this post a few days ago and it triggered a bigger one on the social networks of social networking, which I wrote over on my blog here

And how about Portaldisestablishmentarianism, or PDE?

[Donald]

On the topic of social networking interconnects, check out Red Hat's Mugshot project. It's an service that lets users pull together their activities from myspace, last.fm, personal blogs, etc in one place. The interesting twists are that the web site and online service are developed as an open source project, and there's a client for Windows and Linux that lets you get live updates about what your friends are doing online.