Competitive social networking

Competitive social networking is a term used to describe two particular aspects of social networking.
Introduction
The first example of a Social Network on the internet was SixDegrees.com in 1997. Since then the web has grown in size, scale and vocabulary with new terms to describe activities appearing daily. Increasingly it is being viewed as a tool for attracting, supporting and retaining employees within companies.

# Competitive Social Networking (1) is used to describe both the scale and choice of social networks. It tends to be used in discussions around how various social networks are vying for customers and advertising.
# Competitive Social Networking (2) is also used to describe an activity that takes place within the network. Activities such as Facebook's 30 days challenge where participants are required to compete in posting various items such as favourite songs, pictures, videos etc.
Competitive Social Networking (1)
The ‘social web’ or ‘web 2.0’, as it is also known, are web services which link people rather than documents and use the Internet as their platform. Competitive social networking is an activity which takes place on these web services and is a system of two-way communication whereby multiple customers interact both as contributors and users of the service itself. It began in the 1990s and started as a result of more sophisticated Internet connectivity which enabled people to contact and interact with each other. In 1999 the network Friends Reunited was launched in Britain and made it possible for people to contact friends they had been at school with. Social networking itself really took off in the mid-2000s; MySpace was launched in the United States in 2003, followed by Facebook in 2004. It was extremely popular with the under-30 age group and social networking became part of everyday life
Nowadays social networking spaces include Digg, Bebo, Twitter, You Tube, Google, Flickr and many others. Social networking can be categorized into fields such as messaging, chat, blogging, wikis and forums. The social networking sites are a means by which individuals can launch their own personalities, or ones they might like to have, and meet people with similar interests. However, in what is described as a ‘highly competitive social networking landscape’ , Facebook has overwhelmingly triumphed over rivals such as MySpace,Friendster and Bebo
Social networking has continued to develop and now many services such as public libraries use them to interact with their users. Businesses have also begun to introduce them and most companies who provide services for social networking depend on advertising for revenue generation. The more visitors they have the more they can charge advertisers. Also, as Tharon Howard notes, ‘Building an online user group for your product or providing an online community to support your employees goes far beyond the simple brand recognition that a 30-second television commercial or a banner ad on a Website provides.’. With social networking companies can now offer a relationship to the user, unlike traditional advertising. The Web 2.0 phenomenon has now indeed ‘...moved from the consumer and college student world to professionals in the business world’. Some of the reasons suggested by Howard for building social networks and thus communities in businesses are:
* Enhancing and sustaining ‘intellectual capital’ (shared knowledge of current research)
* Increasing creativity and cross-fertilization
* Improving decision making processes with communities
* Preserving institutional knowledge
* Providing a higher quality interaction with your organisation
* Improving retention and loyalty
* Reducing training and support costs
* Identifying customer needs and new product opportunities
* Reducing travel costs and addressing problems ‘just in time
* Flattening organizational hierarchies.
The company Deltoitte LLP: D Street realized that they faced certain competitive challenges and wanted to ‘win the talent war’ by appealing to a younger workforce. They turned to social networking and soon realized that internal social networking also had some added benefits. For example, it made ‘a large company feel smaller’ and they could also:
* Offer more flexible work arrangements
* Establish virtual teams
* Bring new employees up to speed
* Improve collaboration
* Increase a sense of belonging amongst the workforce and thereby retain them
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There are now many companies using social networking and some examples of company sites which have been established are: Awareness Inc.’s Enterprise Social Media; Jive Software’s Clearspace; IBM’s Lotus Connections and Microsoft’s SharePoint. Social networking is a worldwide phenomenon and China is one of the countries which has a ‘highly competitive social networking market’ . Its popularity is illustrated in the case of Baidu, the Chinese web service, whose stocks increased dramatically following news of its joint venture plans with Facebook .However, there are now added challenges to large established social networking sites in that they must keep users engaged. Specialised sites may be better at focussing on catering to the needs of different audiences and in the future all sites may be forging links with third parties and ‘aggressively developing new ways of making sites stickier (and more profitable)’. To engage in competitive social networking sites must continue to be innovative in order to attract new users as the Web is after all ‘a competition for eyeballs’.
Competitive Social Networking (2)
Competitive Social Networking also refers to group activities and challenges members of social networking sites take part in. These activities offer what social theorists refer to as ‘a sense of belonging’ to participants by offering a ‘portal to information, knowledge, and people, where members can share content and establish relationships with others’. Sites, such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter encourage users to interact and this is often done through group activities.
Facebook’s 30day song challenge is a good example of this type of activity and currently has over a half of a million members participating. The song challenge requires participants to post a link daily for 30 days to songs for reasons ranging from favourite and most hated - to songs they want played at their wedding or funeral. In order to take part in these group events, users simply opt in - there is no need to exchange personal information, nor is there any follow up if a participant does not complete the activity. An additional space or ‘wall’ is available if participants wish to chat with each other about the activity.
Another popular example of this is the booklist challenges - some of which are commercially driven and require users to supply information on how many books they have read from a list of most popular/famous titles. Companies such as the BBC, The Daily Telegraph and Oprah Winfrey have participated in these challenges - with the users again opting in to the challenge. Once the challenge is completed the user has the chance to publish their results on their own network page - to encourage others to participate - this is taken further by some of the companies, such as The Daily Telegraph, publishing a leaderboard for participants to place themselves amongst their peers.

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