This is Part 2 of a 2 Part blog on the Social Computing Industry Panel that was held on Saturday, May 12, 2007 at the WWW2007 conference. Panelists included Andrew Hopkins from Yahoo, Dick Hardt from Sxip Identity, Neel Sandaresen from eBay and Greg Cypes from AOL. Mike Beltzner from Mozilla moderated the panel.
Mike asked about the implications that occur when a social networking site / service grows very quickly. He showed the following data about Facebook growth and asked each panelist to comment:
Users July 2006 – 7M
Users Feb 2007 – 18M
Canada select demographics
Population – 19.5M
Users – 1.5M
% of Population using Facebook - ~8%
Andrew was the first to respond. He stated the following as it relates to linking to other people:
1. One third of users don’t link to anyone,
2. One third of users link to small groups, and
3. One third of users link to lots of people.
He said that for number 2, a star pattern typically emerges where one person is at the center of the star and the community revolves around them. For number 3, there are multiple star patterns that interconnect.
Neel said that as the community grows, the policing of the community becomes more difficult. The site tools need to enable the community to police itself, and only ask for help as a last resort.
Greg said that the barriers to online transactions are coming down. In the past, transactions were conducted between people face-to-face. Without having a face-to-face transaction, the site needs to provide a level of trust for the buyer and seller. One example of this is PayPal. By going through PayPal, both the buyer and seller have a level of trust in the transaction, that if something goes bad, there is a remediation avenue.
Andrew asked that from a big business perspective, what will keep “this” from collapsing on itself, i.e., what is the business case? When people are brought together around a community, how can advertising be presented in a way that is not annoying? Today, Yahoo is responsible for 12% of Page Views worldwide. He feels this number will go down and no one company will have greater than 10%. One answer may be to have very targeted advertising that is tailored to the community.
Dick said that an increase in social networks causes an increase in silos, because people who are unique find other people who are unique also. Social networking tools allow people to form “niche” groups in stead of being influenced by larger groups or communities.
Neel related a personal story about growing up in Bombay. He said that when he was younger, it was rude to invite someone to a party via phone or mail. It was proper to make invitations in person only. He said that today in Bombay, most invitations and greetings are done online, this showing that the Internet and social networks are contributing to a cultural (societal) shift in India.