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SocialGO, yet another social network maker

Written on 6th October 2008 22 COMMENTS
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer

There’s another iteration of a white-label social networking site creator in town, and its name is SocialGO.

Much like the heavily funded Ning, other social networking software makers such as PeopleAggregator, SocialSpring, Kwiqq, OneSite, GoingOn, CrowdVine, Mzinga, Haystack, CollectiveX, Moli, KickApps, DZOIC, Pringo, SmallWorldLabs and about a gazillion others, SocialGO enables you to create an online community website which can be ran stand-alone or bolted onto an existing website. Features include communication stuff like (instant) messaging, content-sharing for photos and videos, blogging tools, event management tabs, an API and blah blah blah.

If you hadn’t noticed by the number of similar services I was able to find after a 5-minute search, this particular market seems to be completely saturated, and my guess is only 2 or 3 from the list I provided above will prove to be viable businesses.

As far as I can tell, SocialGO doesn’t bring anything new to the table and is therefore remarkably late to the game. You have to wonder why UK-based Bright Things believes it can make SocialGO stand out in the crop. Jumpstarting the creation of social networks by giving away £1000 for the most ‘creative and innovative’ one is hardly going to make users aware of the service at all.

How do they plan to make a dent in the plans of Ning to become the default go-to site for creating social networks on the fly, when the Palo Alto company has someone like Marc Andreessen as Chairman and co-founder and oh … over 100 million dollars in funding? Not to mention the competition they have from existing social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, which offer customization tools to deliver a personalized networking experience for their users as well.

I’m all for taking risks and launching new web services that have a shot at appealing to a large number of people, but where’s the added value in this one? Or maybe I’m just being too cynical here, in which case you have the opportunity to convince me of the advantages of SocialGO in the comments.

(Hat tip goes to MoMB, which recently celebrated its 3rd birthday. Congrats!)

22 Comments »

About the author: Robin Wauters is a Belgium-based social media consultant, startup advisor, blogger, entrepreneur, Twitter fanatic, conference organizer and allround web addict. Between trying out just about every new web application that gets in his sight, he advises local startups like ContactOffice, Oxynade and Yuntaa. And when he's not busy trying to keep tabs with what's going on in the virtualization & cloud computing industry as managing editor of Virtualization.com, he's probably working on the organization of Plugg, an annual celebration of European web entrepreneurship.

22 comments/trackbacks to “SocialGO, yet another social network maker”

Oct 8, 2008: Marc’s Voice » Blog Archive » October 7th, ‘08 blogging
[...] SocialGo, BlueHouse, OpenRemote, Enomaly, SocialDeck, MyPunchBowl, Alert [...]
Jan 6, 2009: paulvereijken (Paul Vereijken)
@nextweblog wrote about SocialGO in October ‘08 http://is.gd/eDZC and three months later The Guardian writes about it too http://is.gd/eDZN

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By David on Oct 6, 2008

I agree with you, it’s only another social network website to fill our emails with invites…

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By Bart on Oct 6, 2008

I guess it is more important to know how big the market is for out-of-the-box social network services and whether this market is already saturated or just took off. If it happens to be a big market only 15 providers is not that much. Compare it to the thousands of video portals, customizable start pages or even CMS systems and you’ll realize 15 players is only the beginning.

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By drivingsouth on Oct 6, 2008

Sorry guys, but i don’t see any news/relevant in this post.

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By Ørv on October 6th, 2008:
@drivingsouth

Saturation in this specific market, to me, seems pretty darn relevant to this blog.

But that’s just my 2 cents.

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By Robin Wauters on October 6th, 2008:
Well, the news is that they just launched their service. The relevance is that this is part of the next web (what this blog happens to be about), even if the market is saturated in my opinion.

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By Alex Halliday on Oct 6, 2008

Thanks for taking the time to check out our service. We welcome this kind of discussion as it helps us to think and form our service moving forward.

White label social networking tools such as ours are massive systems which cater to such a wide range of niches and applications that it’s difficult to point to just one or two differentiators.

We have lots of unique features like video chat, an open account api and a member billing system but our approach is fundementally different as well – from interface to legal relationship with owners to future road map. We are getting loads of interest from users on competitor networks who are interested in our approach and our BETA program has had a good response to date.

More announcements on the SocialGO blog soon.

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By Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on October 6th, 2008:
Hi Alex, good of you to join us here. I think would be good for people to give your service a try and see for themselves if it suits them or not. To make that easier I went ahead and built a Next Web Blog community at your service:

http://thenextweb.socialgo.com/home.html

Set-up was easy but so is Nings. My question to you: if someone asks me “I need a social network for my community. What should I use?” I should be able to give him a simple answer. My answer could be “You should use SocialGo” but what if this person then asks “Why not Ning? I heard so much about them. What is the difference?”.

What would your answer be? Your comment here might satisfy some people but it won’t help me persuade a potential customer…

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By Eileen Field on January 25th, 2009:
Thanks for your post! I am just one such person – new to social networks and running an “internet school” where privacy controls, moderation and filtering are all vitally important. My students, many of whom are vulnerable, are looking for a separate, unique method of social networking for amongst themselves and so come to me, their Head teacher, asking for suggestions. I spotted Social Go at the BETT, was intrigued and launched our own test bed. Unfortunately, the filtering doesn’t work – I’ve managed to fill all my own posts with choice “anglo saxon” expletives and all have got through! I don’t have the time to run the school and moderate all posts… so where do I go for something for my students to use and to keep them protected? Ning… I’m off to take a look. Any other suggestions would be very welcomed.

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By kuki on March 27th, 2009:
how can

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By mark on April 29th, 2009:
Hi Eileen,
Shmash.tv may provide what you want/need (www.shmash.tv). It’s a social network for schools but focused on education.

Cheers
Mark.

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By Raj Anand on Oct 6, 2008

Thanks for the mention Robin. I just wanted to clarify that Kwiqq is not strictly a white labelled solution. We reuse a lot of our libraries but there are substantial bespoke elements too. Simply because no two good social networks are alike !

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By Saurier on Oct 7, 2008

Thanks for the nod Robin!

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By Jordan Schwartz on Oct 7, 2008

While the market may be flooded as far as generic social networks go, there’s still a lot of opportunity for targeted, niche verticals. Like Crowdvine, Pathable (www.pathable.com) is a service that builds social networks exclusively for conferences and events. Tools like integrated Birds of a Feather wikis, session calendars and badges are what make it “better than Ning” for these specific instances.

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By johnny on Oct 7, 2008

to be honest i think socialgo is the most amazing platform ive seen so far…the features are way better than most others. i mean for christs sake theres even instant messaging with audio/video capability.

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By Buddy on Oct 16, 2008

I think that their “Freemium” model is pretty good. It seems like a lot to pay $20 just to use your own domain but I like what I have seen so far.

I think that Ning lost a lot of go faith with users when they got rid of widgetlabratory apps without informing anyone ahead of time.

Socialgo might just make a go of it though it does seem like Ning has a huge headstart.

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By Jay on Oct 24, 2008

Oddly enough, SocialGo picked up widgetlabratory.

Good move on their part.

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By Darren Burn on Nov 3, 2008

I use SocialGo as an additional feature to my Janet Jackson fansite and it has been welcomed by the site’s visitors.

Within a month we have reached several hundred members and grow every day.

I have nothing but praise for the software and the team behind it.

Darren

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By skynob on Jan 1, 2009

This software should enable members to invite friends directly from their profiles not the admin alone.

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By kuki on Mar 27, 2009

please

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By hanz on Apr 25, 2009

I’d say Ning.com. It’s just socialgo icons are kinda similar to Ning, and I don’t really like clones.
ok, I guess that reasoning is not enough.
Socialgo is easy to use, it just kinda lacks.. I dunno, substance? It feels too.. plain, I guess.

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