Tag Archives: myspace

Are There Too Many Social Networks?

group-success-with-borderI was following a discussion in chat area on the member site Networkers United Worldwide www.NUOpen.com I am an officer and advisor on that site, and found this question, which I have pasted below. I feel stronly about Social Networking and Social Business Structures, but we can talk more about that later.

 

“Anyone here find that Social Networking sites have become a dime a dozen? I have had a hard time determining which ones have the best programing and potential to do what all the other claim to do. Any feelings strong or otherwise about this one?”

Social Networking sites are tools. As with any tools you can use a butter knife as a screwdriver or a rock as a hammer, but if you need to pound lots of nails or are using a phillips head screw you may need a more specialized tool.

I belong to LinkedIn, Xing, Ecademy, Naymz, Plaxo and on and on…. Which one do I use the most? Which one am I willing to pay for? LinkedIn. Why? Well it suites me and what I am trying to accomplish.

I am also on Facebook and MySpace, but as a business man in the field of mainly commercial real estate, I don’t want to nudge you or send you beers and hugs.

feedthechildren-logoI do a lot of work in the humanitarian field. I work with www.FEED333.org as they help feed thousands of families in the U.S during the holiday season. I am the blessed and honored Los Angeles coordinator of Miracle on South Central and this last year we fed around 4000 families aroundsalvation-army-logo 40,000 meals in cooperation with the Salvation Army, Feed the Children, The NBA Players Association, Humanity Unites Brilliance (HUB) and others. I also started a e a group of over 1100 of us that feed, get water, education and micro loans to around 3000 families in Africa a month. These are very important to me and so I promote those on Facebook where I might just nudge you or send you a hug .

In order to get a better web presence I believe you should join many of the free sites because when you get googled and you have a website you want people to go to, or a product project or service to promote, it will show up all over the place and that is how the Internet works for the most part.

I do also believe as the founder of 6 of my own networking sites and as an officer of this site, that as you become good at networking and are looking at using the site to increase your business or monetize it in some way, that you need to look at a niche audience.

An Example: A CPA may elect to join a CPA Association. This is cool for keeping up with the industry, but if he is looking for clients that group would be no help at all. He would have to join say a business site where business owners come to find resources. Would the large groups like Facebook work fine for growing your business? Yes, and as mentioned you need presence their, but remember you have to wade through so much to find the people you need. While on a niche site, most of the people there may be exactly who you are looking for. There is a difference.

This is interesting

If you take the number of total sites out there then you can say Holy Cow… this is madness. I get a count of networking sites on Yahoo at over 3 Trillion!!! Although you may be into Naturapathic Healing and love bowling as well as play in a band on the weekends, if you are looking for a way to promote and grow your commercial real estate business, then you can negate music sites, Natural Healing Sites, Bowling sites and so on. Now search on commercial real estate networking sites at first on Yahoo I got a count of 139M of those and as I broke down my search pattern by using quotes (If you do not use quotes on Yahoo or Google searches you are taking much more time than you need searching. Find out how to use them….) I get my count down to 4M. If I start refining my search I can get this number down much further until I have a number I can comfortably go review to see if it meets my needs. So you see you need to know what your goal is. If you define what you are trying to accomplish then the daunting number of sites is not so daunting.

Another thing I notice is that though I have started over 6 networking sites you can never tell when one will take off by fulfilling a need for someone. I have groups that are over 3500 members and some that have no more than two. What did I do different? Nothing. I promoted and built them the same way. People are looking and you never know what for. If you build it they might come if they feel a need or an interest. I have seen some sites that make me scratch my head only to see huge memberships…. Huh… I don’t get it and am not running to join those sites, but it will prove the point that there is always room for one more.

By the way if you are looking for a great commercial real estate site check out mine at www.crepig.com

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p style=”line-height:14.25pt;”>Kindest Regards,
JW Najarian

www.jwnajarian.com

Also visit

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p style=”line-height:14.25pt;”>www.FEED333.org
www.CheckOutHUB.com
www.Giving4ALiving.net
www.repig.net

 

Is Social Networking Becoming Specialized?

Social Networks are everywhere and it seems like everyone is at least on one or six of them.  Where are we going with this?

Almost everyone it seems belongs to a social network like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Jaiku, Plaxo, Roov, Friendfeed, Nexopia, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut, Pownce, Xing or Eacademy and they are becoming more and more popular every day.  I get so many request to join different ones that as soon as I see the requests I delete them.  You only have so much time in the day to go check all your various networks.  I like LinkedIn because as a businessman I don’t get bothered with pokes and hearts.  I get to meet and search on other businessmen that I may be able to work with.

Most of the networks that I have seen have different cultures like MySpace and Facebook that seem to be designed for families and friends wheras, Xing, Ecademy and LinkedIn are more business aligned.

How many people are using social networks worldwide?  I have no clue, but it is in the hundreds of millions and shows no signs slowing in the near future.  Facebook just blew MySpace out of the water with 161 million unique visitors worldwide in September, compared to 117 million for MySpace in September. 

There are many reasons people are on social networks.  Sometimes it is just to connect with friends.  Sometimes it is to make new friends.  Sometimes it is to meet with known business contacts, sometimes it is to meet new business contacts and sometimes it is to try to build very large networks of people in order to stroke your ego or to build a large database to market to.  Whether you are or are not on a large network you still do not like to be spammed or marketed for the most part. 

Recently with the advent of websites like Ning, everyone can now create their own social network.  It is daunting at best.  This sounds almost nuts, but I believe that with the advent of Ning that the new wave may be the niche network.  You will still have to go to the big boys if you are collecting names to build large lists, but in order to really be effedtual and get to work with like minded people you may find yourself going to or guilding a smaller specialized network.

On the smaller networks you are more assured of networking with like minded individuals that will be open to your projects, products and services.  Small networks tend to have, support and make their sites work best for the type of group they support or market to.

In order to test this theory and to better support the members of a group I started on LinkedIn, I have started a new social network that is dedicated and supports investors and professionals that work in and support the Commercial Real Estate Industry.

All the News on the site is dedicated to Commercial Real Estate or Global Finance.  The Forums allow members to offer their projects or services and allows Investors to use these services or search for professionals they may need.  The Groups are geared toward the Investor or Professional and so you don’t have to wade through thousands of unrelated sites.

The Ning network allows you to build a social network for your group or cause and allows enought customization for you to get most of what you need to do done.  This is a FREE service so for the small cost of your time you can build a network of great value.

I don’t know where this will all go.  Maybe the large networks can tie together to give everyone the ability to search for what we need from everyone on the big sites.  That would be exciting or maybe we will be like doctors specializing more and more.  Since social networking is still in it’s infancy, it will be fun to watch.