5 reasons why social networks can succeed

After explor­ing why social net­works fail, I also have to con­sider why peo­ple are still join­ing them, in spite of their fail­ures. So, going along the same approach, here I am with 5 rea­sons why social net­works can succeed:

5. Viral Nature

They key to social net­works quickly mov­ing up in size is their viral nature. Because peo­ple who get on those need to expand their net­work, they invite their friends. And those friends, in turn, invite their friends. The viral nature of a new social net­work is an impor­tant part to mak­ing it succeed.

Some net­works have taken the model one step fur­ther by being “by invi­ta­tion only”. Ini­tially, this rep­re­sents a cer­tain level of exclu­siv­ity, with peo­ple then try­ing to get in. This exclu­siv­ity breaks down, though, if the social net­works do not have a mech­a­nism to slow down or limit the num­ber of new invi­ta­tions going out. All it takes to tear down that sense of exclu­siv­ity is for one per­son to start invit­ing hordes of people. 

4. Online Identity

Not every­one has a per­sonal web­site. It may come as a shock to most of my read­ers but, for some peo­ple, social net­works per­sonal pages are the only place where peo­ple main­tain an iden­tity. Some, like MySpace, have cap­i­tal­ized on that effect by pro­vid­ing tools that allow to enhance those pro­files in ways that make them indis­tinct from per­sonal sites, beyond the fact that the URL is on the ser­vice instead of being a per­sonal one. 

3. Enhanced Knowledge

When used prop­erly, social net­works can be a great way to enhance knowl­edge. Tap­ping into one’s social net­work can allow for peo­ple to fill an infor­ma­tion gap if mem­bers of their extended social net­work have deep sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise in a cer­tain area. At the cur­rent time, few social net­work­ing sites have used that capa­bil­ity but, I believe this is one of the most use­ful aspects of social net­work­ing sites. 

2. Basic human need to share

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of blogs have shown that peo­ple love to share their opin­ion. The pro­lif­er­a­tion of the open source move­ment shows that some peo­ple love to share their exper­tise. I think there is a deeply rooted need among human beings to share, whether it is infor­ma­tion or opin­ions. Social net­works appeal to the altru­is­tic side of peo­ple by allow­ing them to share their con­nec­tion and intro­duce friends to other friends. 

1. Basic human need to connect

Most of all, though, human beings are social crea­tures. As such, the root of all suc­cess from social net­work­ing sites is based on a need to con­nect and expand con­nec­tions. For most of his­tory, con­nec­tions were largely lim­ited by geo­graph­i­cal or eco­nomic con­sid­er­a­tions. Social net­works allow peo­ple to expand their con­nec­tions around inter­ests. This first appeared with the rise of Usenet and bul­letin boards, where mem­bers formed com­mu­ni­ties around spe­cific inter­ests and has now expanded into the social net­work­ing realm, where peo­ple can find out more about peo­ple who are most like them.