Friday, January 09, 2004

Social network software.

Social network software has been getting a lot of attention lately. Is it a good thing or not? I think it's always good to add a channel through which people can find you, especially if you are a small business. Some people are suspicious or nervous about sharing their rolodexes. My view is that those who share thrive, those who hoard die. I'm on LinkedIn - search for me as William Brandon, and please add me to your network. -- BB

What YASNSes bring.

Jeremy Zawodny:

"Get yourself out of the mind set of social network software for the sake of social network software and start thinking about how adding a social networking component to existing systems could improve them."

Follow the links from JZ's post to find a lot of discussion surrounding this debate.

And see the argument that my colleague Stephen offers to the view that there is a disincentive to sharing one's connections:

"If the value you create is based on 'knowing', then your livelihood will be undercut by someone who has the same knowledge - in this case, the same (or similar) network of contacts - and who shares it freely."

(By the way, my primary point of presence in social networking systems is here, on Ryze. Ryze is one of the oldest systems alive today - it was launched in 2002. Worth a login if you have yet to try one of those systems...)

[Seb's Open Research]
9:49:40 AM    

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Last update: 2/2/2004; 11:11:46 PM .

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