What makes social networking sites ‘click’
As we approach the end of another year, there would be multitudes of new people who would have joined some social networking site or other.
Well, there are dime and dozen reasons for the success of Social Networking Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Orkut, etc…. but is there any common thread or insight that binds the success of these SNS sites?
We humans spend most of our waking hours in building and maintaining ‘relationship’. This behavior is embedded in our genes. The activity of ‘grooming’ in primates, a human child crying for attention, the activities we, as adults, do in our day to day life – like the friendly greeting to colleagues, the discussion over cup of coffee, meeting the client deadlines too :) - All these actions is related to building and maintaining relationships.
One of the core objective of building and maintaining relationships is to create an opinion about oneself in others mind. The way we talk, what we speak, the way we dress, the way we walk, all communicate things about us. We spend our energies ‘branding’ ourselves, so that people form a specific opinion about us.
This exercise of opinion creation and spreading it far and wide is facilitated by the use of technology (Internet). Social Networking sites, thus becomes a platform for people to broadcast their personality, and thus spread the opinion.
The core value proposition these popular SNS sites lies in our day to day behavior of opinion creation and opinion consumption… For example in college campuses across the globe a general way of greeting would be – Wassup?? Or a normal conversation (especially a telephonic conversation) would consist of this question – so, what are you doing?...Now you know where Facebook or Twitter got their Value proposition from :)
How popular these SNS and other Social Media sites are? You can take a look at this link and see the stats for yourself. http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/2009-social-network-analysis-report/
Cheers
Santosh
Well, there are dime and dozen reasons for the success of Social Networking Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Orkut, etc…. but is there any common thread or insight that binds the success of these SNS sites?
We humans spend most of our waking hours in building and maintaining ‘relationship’. This behavior is embedded in our genes. The activity of ‘grooming’ in primates, a human child crying for attention, the activities we, as adults, do in our day to day life – like the friendly greeting to colleagues, the discussion over cup of coffee, meeting the client deadlines too :) - All these actions is related to building and maintaining relationships.
One of the core objective of building and maintaining relationships is to create an opinion about oneself in others mind. The way we talk, what we speak, the way we dress, the way we walk, all communicate things about us. We spend our energies ‘branding’ ourselves, so that people form a specific opinion about us.
This exercise of opinion creation and spreading it far and wide is facilitated by the use of technology (Internet). Social Networking sites, thus becomes a platform for people to broadcast their personality, and thus spread the opinion.
The core value proposition these popular SNS sites lies in our day to day behavior of opinion creation and opinion consumption… For example in college campuses across the globe a general way of greeting would be – Wassup?? Or a normal conversation (especially a telephonic conversation) would consist of this question – so, what are you doing?...Now you know where Facebook or Twitter got their Value proposition from :)
How popular these SNS and other Social Media sites are? You can take a look at this link and see the stats for yourself. http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/2009-social-network-analysis-report/
Cheers
Santosh
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