Why Ning And The Commoditization of Social Networking Matters

Not long ago companies like Blogger (now owned by Google), Sixapart, and Wordpress forever changed the Web by making it easy and virtually free for anyone to create their own blog and become an online publisher.  After only a few years blog search engine Technorati is tracking over 70,000,000 blogs!

Today, at least two new companies, Ning and KickApps, are evolving the Web even more by making it just as easy for anyone to quickly and inexpensively (FREE!) create their own social network on any topic.

Social networking has been around as long as blogging, but only within the last year have these new turn-key software solutions made it plug-n-play simple for anyone (or any company) to create their own networking communities.  For years, people have been creating Yahoo! Groups, and leveraging the power of MySpace and now Facebook.  But people have little control in these walled gardens and they make it difficult to customize their services.  (Yes, even with Facebook Apps).

Ning and KickApps on the other hand have leveled the playing field yet again and as a result the social network has been commoditized.  In fact, in the past few months tens of thousands of people have launched their own social networks.  Ning alone now boasts over 80,000 communities created since they opened up their platform a few months ago with more than 5,500 new social networks created in the past 10 days!

With the commoditization of social networking we are about to see a lot more niche communities launch in the coming weeks/months/years.  The question is, how will this impact all those companies who are spending a lot of money and resources to build their own proprietary/closed online networks?

Web 2.0 continues to make it easy for anyone to publish.  Now it's just as easy to create your own network, open or closed.  You don't need a budget.  You don't need servers.  And you don't need any technical ability. It truly is a flat world for social networking.

This means that the power of social networking is open to your local lyme disease foundation, or the regional network of nurse practitioners. You can create a temporary community for a friend's fund raiser, or compete with the big social networking platforms to create an environment more tailored to the needs of your group. You are now in control and can create any social network you want.

This is going to have a major impact on many companies in the Health 2.0 space as well as the Web overall.  Over the past 18 months we have seen the launch of dozens of niche social networking communities in the health sector focusing on everything from MS and ALS (PatientsLikeMe.com), to more comprehensive health communities like DailyStrength.org.  We've also seen millions of dollars be invested in companies like Eons.com focusing on the boomer market.  And over the coming months we'll see many more new companies launch to help bring new solutions to healthcare.

When OrganizedWisdom first launched we billed ourselves as the "first social network for health" with a mission of organizing all the world's best health wisdom.  We quickly realized that building a walled garden community was not the solution and over the past few months we dramatically evolved our strategy for a relaunch this fall (we're in private alpha right now). If you pay attention to OrganizedWisdom.com, you may have noticed that several months ago we stopped building new technology on the live site.  That's because we learned some valuable lessons early and quickly saw that we needed to make big changes to improve our service, stay competitive long-term, and tap into the power of a world where people are sharing such great wisdom across thousands of blogs and now social networks, just like they have in online forums for so many years.  The changes we are making are not merely technological.  They are about adding value to a world where everyone has access to great technology.

For companies like ours, and many others working hard to bring better solutions to people to help manage their health, there is still a significant need for better information, services, solutions.  The opportunity remains to continue to innovate, focus on quality, and add value in a commoditized technology world.

Comments

[Jeff O'Connor]

In addition to having an interest in healthcare information systems, I am also interested in the "social Web" and its evolution; that's one of the reasons why I jumped on membership at this site the day I found it and tried in my own way to encourage its growth and development with a little constructive criticism.

Based on the number of other reviews and mentions that Organized Wisdom has gotten in the healthcare and healthcare technology blogging community, I'm not alone in this.

I like Ning, and I am excited to hear about KickApps, but for the life of me I cannot figure out why Yahoo! is executing so poorly on its self-stated mission of leveraging the power of this sort of technology, especially in the healthcare space. Not only do they have an enormous user base and a viable (and popular) model for prompting users to generate content with Yahoo! Answers, they've obviously got a plug-n-play environment for creating social Web sites. But don't take my word for it, check out these sites:

underground.yahoo.com

pontiacunderground.autos.yahoo.com

The consistent use of "underground" and the emphasis on an entirely user-generated site pulling material from across the company's properties leads me to believe that there were big plans for a series of Yahoo! "underground" sites on whatever topic users wanted, and that these were pilots. What I can't figure out is why they didn't implement the program, especially in the emerging healthcare space where report after report shows that people are turning the Web in droves for medical advice that they feel is trustworthy and - more importantly - cheap.

Yahoo's loss is your gain, and good for you guys. :-) I hope that OrganizedWisdom continues to bulk up before Yahoo! and the rest of the 800 lbs. gorillas in the social Web space wake up and see what a tremendous opportunity they're blowing.