NJ: Increasingly mobiles seem to be at the hub of all this technology – is this the future? MB: The future of mobile social networking is at the very early stages of being played out. There are the mobile versions of MySpace and Facebook which are, of course, out there already – you can get them on your mobile. But there are lots of newer applications –
Whrrl.com is a new US service that allows users to aggregate information about a place they visit – so you go and visit somewhere, and these are filtered based on ratings via the accompanying social network. Business networking is gradually supplanting the traditional classified advertising market both via formal networks like LinkedIn, and informal ones like Facebook. So people are using Facebook for business as well – quite a lot, in fact. LinkedIn is perhaps the biggest global social network, centred just around professionals. Compared to paying the high costs of job advertising, leveraging your network, expanded by the laws around six degrees of separation, it’s pretty inexpensive to find people now if you put your mind to it, using social networks.
NJ: Where does Facebook fit in this brave new world? MB: Facebook is, as of a few months ago, now the biggest social network in the UK – that’s what all the research houses say. Facebook’s ability to allow users to network fast is really off the scale. The newsfeed is all seeing, all knowing – it hasn’t quite reached sentient stages yet, but it is probably not long. But get used to the newsfeed because they will be part and parcel of all social networks in a matter of months, if not in the next month, because this ability to track what’s going on inside your network is really a big deal at the moment. The viral effect of the newsfeed is incredibly powerful, it is far more powerful than blogs. And I’m a blogger – so I ought to know!
F8 is the platform on which Facebook is built. The other game changer in social networks has to be the creation of the network as a platform. Increasingly Facebook applications which you can add to your profile
42 HIT ME! HOW TO GET YOUR BUSINESS TO PUNCH ITS WEIGHT 0NLINE
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