In a previous post regarding the USAToday redesign I wondered whether the vast majority of the mainstream had any interest in getting social on the web.

Here’s some more fodder for that argument in this InformationWeek survey regarding people’s interest in the social aspects of Web 2.0 (hat tip: Deep Jive Interests).

The meat:

Rating the importance of community groups, survey respondents expressed strong or some connection with: extended family (94%), neighborhood or town (80%), religious or spiritual organization (77%), hobby/interest (69%), workplace (68%), local community group (45%), national social activism/volunteer group (30%), professional group or union (25%), and virtual or online community (20%).

Perhaps more noteworthy, 61% of the total public – based on the 1,004 American adults surveyed – are not interested in online communities and 18% said they don’t have the time for them.

That said, I do think there is a huge market for social sites. I’m just wondering if there’s enough users to sustain the number of companies already in the pipe. It seems even the most successful sites recently revealed some frankly, embarrassing advertising numbers. YouTube is supposedly making only $15 million a year (down sharply from estimates of $15 million a month), while Facebook has terrible ad performance (that CPM is multples below even this ridiculous blog). Meanwhile, VCs are raising the bar.

One big reality check I should employ more often is the “aging relative” test. I get links to YouTube videos from non-technological relatives all the time. They, as mainstream users, get online video via YouTube – load the page, click play, and enjoy.

Do I see these same aging relatives going on a social news site like Digg (or now USAToday), and submitting and rating links and commenting and rating stuff? No. It’s not just a matter of confusion, but also, what’s the point? For the casual web user, reading is plenty.

Conversely, in my case, although I’m on the net constantly and very interested in social sites, I can only handle two or three social sites at any one time. And that’s logging in once a week if that – let alone every day. If I get interested in a new site, my participation in another falls off drastically.

I think there are some interesting strategies emerging to get around this social network overload, though:

1. Instead of driving traffic to one site, build a distributed network across existing groups of sites through a widget (MyBlogLog).
2. Go “long tail” – build a whole bunch of smaller social sites so they add up to a big one (Hubpages, Ning).
3. Make it easier for people to manage profiles on many different social sites (OpenID) [while handy, this still doesn't solve the time commitment].
4. Go after existing communities with lots of free time, tons of passion in a niche subject, or a demographic with the Internet attached to their retinas (Flixter, Facebook).
5. Make participation even easier so involvement time is reduced (Twitter, WTF, Spotplex).

Anyhow, it’s pretty amazing to see how in the half year I started this blog, things are shifting. This is the way technology works, and why those hard at work on last year’s concepts are already changing tactics. I’m also seeing relatively old media (Yahoo! USAToday, Netscape) incorporate more social networking aspects (reducing those “big ideas” to features) while even more ambitious startups move on to even more forward thinking ideas (FreeBase and the semantic web, widgets, mobile phones).

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Categories: General, Technology :: ::

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