Wednesday, 22 October 2008
where does comotivate fit?
« having fun leaving comments on blogs | Main | Expert advice on returning from injury »I have been doing a lot of research into various social media and it struck me that one of the main challenges is in trying to categorise web resources within this social media context. I guess it's only industry commentators that might be interested, but I would have thought brand managers and marketing execs would need to get this helicopter view of the space as well.
I've found 10 categories (but this is work in progress)....
1. Dominant utilities: these are the leading social networks through which huge numbers of people experience the web. Their entire online experience is characterised by use of these sites. Examples: MySpace, Facebook, youtube
2. Constituencies: often these are not significantly differentiated but have a user base with established status levels and emotional investment. Examples: Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Skyrock, Orkut, SecondLife (and many others)
3. Themed: these social networks are founded on ‘horizontal’ niches: business, travel, music, achievement. Examples: LinkedIn, WAYN, Last FM, comotivate (and many others)
4. Verticals: these social networks are founded on ‘vertical’ niches: profession, leisure pursuit, ethnicity, gender. Examples: Damsels in Success, MiGente, Lawyers.net, Sermo, Gamervision (and many others)
5. Optimizers: these are often tools or applications designed to share and organise content. They can accelerate distribution via their linkages. Examples: Qassia.com, StumbleUpon , Digg, Delicious, Ma.gnolia (and many others)
6. Commentators: these self-styled authorities heavily influence opinion via their blog and provoke high numbers of comments from readers. They are ‘human optimizers’. Examples: Seth Godin, Joseph Jaffe, Gary Vaynerchuk (and many others)
7. Platform-centric: these social networks are centred on mobile devices. Examples: MyGamma, Itsmy, Trutap, Flirtomatic, Mig33, Dada (and many others)
8. Facilitators: these sites provide templates for social networks to be created featuring off the shelf tools. Included in this category are also storage sites. Examples: Ning, Weebly, Crowdvine, Social Engine, LiveJournal, TypePad, Wordpress, Blogger, woofiles (and many others)
9. Aggregators: these applications help users manage their multiple profiles across different social networks. Examples: Social Thing, iStalker, Social Stream, Profilactic, Spokeo (and many others)
10. Feeders: these social networks provide limited, personalised access to the status updates of your contacts. Examples: Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku
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