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Alex - Alexandros Poulos is Covisio's Managing Director and co-founder. He enjoys technology marketing, innovative thinking, and living by the sea.
Alex is the main contributor of the On the Scene marketing blog.
Learn more about me here.
Social Networking Squared
With participation numbers and interaction levels in social networks soaring, it comes as no surprise that business schools are starting to pay close attention to these new groundswell phenomena. I was especially happy to see Professor Soumitra Dutta and Dr. Mathew Fraser from Insead recently publish an excellent book on social networking (“Turning social networking on its head: where horizontal and vertical networks meet”), offering some great analysis on how Web 2.0 is changing not just our work but our lives too.
Prof. Dutta and Dr. Fraser characterize traditional business networks as vertical (e.g. based on an individual’s position within a corporation) and social networks as horizontal (e.g. based on an individual’s contribution to a dialogue or project at hand). They then go ahead to describe how these new virtual networks are driving change not only within business environments but also in individual lives and across societies at large. The authors agree that the current economic climate is creating a widespread insecurity amongst professionals and this further leads to record membership growth in social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and others.
The numbers certainly support their arguments. Facebook is closing 2008 reporting stunning numbers:
- More than 140 million users worldwide.
- Each user has an average of 100 friends.
- Each user spends an average of 20 mins per day on Facebook.
- More than 70% of users are outside the US.
- More than 52,000 applications and widgets are available on the Facebook platform.
LinkedIn also experienced record growth in 2008 and it currently counts more than 30 million users worldwide. In October 2008, Nielsen Online reported a year-over-year growth of 193% for LinkedIn and of 116% for Facebook. Expect these numbers to go up in 2009.