Domain-Specific Social Applications
I haven't heard a whole lot about domain-specific social applications; most of the ones we're familiar with attempt to serve a very broad audience. Most of the talk at SG FOO was about the world's Facebooks, Flickrs, and LInkedIns--who of course were very well represented. All of these sites attempt to be something (in some cases, everything) to everybody.
But there's another way to slice the pie. Last summer, my brother was in the hospital for an extended period. He and his wife created a CarePages account. CarePages isn't all that unlike Facebook: it has a blog, a photo gallery, a message board, and "virtual gifts." You can receive notifications via email (they don't seem to support SMS). CarePages appears to be supported partly by advertising, though I would guess that the bulk of their funding comes by contract to the hospitals offering the service (in my brother's case, Johns Hopkins).
What distinguishes CarePages from other social applications? There's a lot more concern for privacy: all the pages are private, you read them by invitation only. (I assume they're subject to HiPPA regulations.) There's some limited support for communities, but nothing like Google Groups--possibly because of privacy regulations. There are some clever photo applications: for example, a "prayer circle" page where you can mouse over patient pictures to pop up their requests, and light a candle. (This is one of the few areas where you can see general patient pictures.) Not difficult to implement, but a nice touch for a hospital-oriented site.
I'm sure that there are lots of specialty social applications; I'd be surprised if they don't already exist for Real Estate. Dopplr arguably qualifies as a "vertical market" application for travel--though it's really not the sort of application I'm thinking about. I'd really like to see a private O'Reilly Twitter; or even Facebook as a corporate address book (hmm, isn't that essentially how Facebook started)? What features would social applications have to add to serve specialized communities?
Web developers have created a lot of value by opening things up, by making communities broader and broader. But value can also be created by closing things down, by serving narrower and more specific communities: the family and friends of a specific hospital patient, the attendees of a particular conference, the employees of a particular company. Does the idea of social applications for specialized communities enable new economic models for electronic commerce?
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I think many would say that the ancestor to the "domain specific social application" is the forum.
I believe the question you pose: "What features would social applications have to add to serve specialized communities?" is the question when looking at transferring these communities and discussions from the world of forums into social media.
(At least it's the question we ask ourselves everyday over at Banktastic.)
social applications for specialized communities already there in many top domains like IT,Banking so on.It will be good to see for all.
oops. looks like my previous comment was truncated
I was referring to www.activerain.com with 73k members. growing like a weed.
Hi Mike,
Interesting post. I also believe that vertical social applications will thrive, but only if they can provide unique value that the larger (horizontal) networks cannot. The nature of network effects means that you have to both have scale and provide unique value to be successful.
As Mike Simonsen said, ActiveRain is indeed a popular networking service and blogging platform for real estate agents.
Trulia Voices (www.trulia.com/voices) is also a very popular real estate social application within the real estate industry targeting consumers. As you expected the real estate transaction is indeed very social and lends itself well to social applications, the industry is now just catching up.
Trulia Voices uses a Q and A format and we'll be rolling out more services shortly. For consumers it offers a way to get fast, free, personal and anonymous real estate advice from multiple local agents and residents. For agents, it is free marketing and enables them to re-use their answers to consumer questions to demonstrate expertise to future clients. You can expect, that today's housing market is accelerating the growth of such services.
I do believe that social applications for specialized commerce will change the economic models around some transactions. For instance, the real estate transaction and compensation for agents is based around commission sharing between multiple parties. The offline social connections are essentially referrals that facilitate this compensation. While there are many differences and we think that the real estate transaction itself is not going to change anytime soon, you can see that in the future as participation increases, these new web/social connections between agents and individuals could be a major driver of new economic models. It is going to be interesting to watch how it develops.
Pete
We are currently developing a social application in the supply chain management domain.
VisibleLogistics a logistics visibility web application for order management. This is also a social application, where your immediate network are your supply chain business partners, which works much better than trying to manage a top-down community as if someone were in charge.
Like the CarePages example, privacy is important here too. If I use VisibleLogistics to manage an order that I ship to one of my customers, only that customer (the buyer) and the carrier (transporter) get the e-mail/SMS notifications and access to the order details web page.
One of this issues not mentioned above is that social applications avoid much of the user management hassle that business applications.
I talk about this in a longer article I wrote about Business networking software and how this relates to VisibleLogistics.
I must say that I really enjoyed reading all of Your posts...Thanks for very interesting article
I think many would say that the ancestor to the "domain specific social application" is the forum.
I believe the question you pose: "What features would social applications have to add to serve specialized communities?" is the question when looking at transferring these communities and discussions from the world of forums into social media.
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mike simonsen [02.19.08 02:52 PM]
>>I'd be surprised if they don't already exist for Real Estate.