plaxo vs facebook vs linkedin - social network showdown

Andrew McAfee recently added to the Serena Facebook-As-Intranet case study. Which prompted an SNS review thang in my head.

I still have issues with Facebook. I think it's a bit of a mess and doesn't give enough control to the individual in terms of identity management. 80 million active users (according to Facebook) would disagree. However it is still a trail-blazer in terms of application development (even if most of them are really annoying).

LinkedIn has 24 million members (according to LinkedIn). If anything, LinkedIn is not messy enough. The Q&A functionality is nice. LinkedIn is the kind of social networking tool you could introduce to your mother (after your rebellious phase of wearing a leather jacket and hanging out with MySpace). As I once got a job via LinkedIn, I can't really complain but there is so much missing from here - e.g. some network visualisation stuff would be cool. LinkedIn seem to know this and have added status updates and some feed integration. But no one would make LinkedIn their intranet.

Plaxo is surprising me. After it gained an uneviable reputation as a spam machine a few years back, I went back in there a few weeks ago to be confronted with LinkedIn's cooler cousin. The design is smooth and spare. And the Pulse page pulls together your connections' blogs, Twitter, Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. Again - a bit lacking on the visualisation front.

I think it takes a particular kind of organisation to have Facebook as their intranet. However there are an increasing number of organisations creating SNS applications within the firewall. Over the next 12 months, we're definitely going to see links between these internal applications and the external ones listed above. And that's without mentioning the acquistion of VisiblePath by Hoovers....

sns around the world

Le Monde have produced this very useful map of social networking site up-take around the world.

Courtesy of Greg.

my own private archipelago

I'm doing fair bit of ONA stuff at work at the moment - using Laurie & Cai's getting-there onasurveys and the wonderful NetDraw. And in doing so, I'm reminded of this post from August concerning Facebook's Friend Wheel that highlights for me the strengths and weaknesses of network mapping.

The strengths: The "Friend Wheel" does a decent job of identifying the main groups in my life from the last 10 years. The clusters from IBM/PwC, Oracle, Calcutta Rescue, Ankali, London/Barbelith, the Australian music heads & poets that leave slight traces, the huge tangle of KM/blogging folk that I know. All beautiful people whom I am lucky to have met.

The weaknesses: You would know nothing of the people I went to schools and universities with (OK - with one exception, Mike). You couldn't see my oldest friends. The people I would die (& maybe kill) for. The vast underground of love and hate and need you will never know. And even with the folk you can see, you don't know about the joy and the pain and the people I've helped, been helped by, screwed over & been screwed over by. You see from 30,000 (air-brushed) feet.

The humility this instills in the network analyst is critical. We see but through a glass darkly - and that is better than not seeing at all. Let's not confuse the map for the territory.

Network spam

I got my first case of Facebook spam a few weeks ago. A blonde female 20-something from NYC. It could have been worse. I have had several cases of LinkedIn spam. No photos attached so easier to deal with.

I am intrigued by the concept of network spam. Mainly because I have spent a lot of my real-world existence feeling like a gate-crasher. And then failing to care. It is the role of every community to make you feel like an outsider - to begin with.

There is a delicate balance to be maintained by the early acts of connection. A comment on a blog. A brief conversation at a party. We want to make contact but not to appear needy. We want an exchange that feels right for both parties.

Or else I could just press my business card (damp with sweat) into you palm and move on.