Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on June 4, 2008 – 11:20 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Two weeks ago, I met a copy writer and ex singer-songwriter, and a video expert, who wanted to start a social network for independent professionals from the creative industry. They had figured to build one themselves, but I convinced them in five minutes that DIY wasn’t the best approach here. Especially since they only wanted to reach around 200 people. So I told these two enthusiastic guys they basically had two options: create a group within a network like LinkedIn or start a Ning community. Now there’s a third option: Neeetz.
Creating a group within a social network
First thing I told them is they could start a LinkedIn or Facebook group, to check how many people are really interested in actively participating in (another) online community. Main advantage is that most people already have an account, so it’s a one-click matter. Also, they don’t have to check more than one social network. A major disadvantage is the lack of engagement. Most social network users see a group just as some sort of tattoo for their profile page: this brand/ politician / food represents my image. Users hardly check what’s going on in the (most of the times dead) community.
Ning versus Neeetz
So this lack of engagement might make you want to choose for creating a community of your own within a service like Ning. They offer you the possibility to create your own social network with a few mouse clicks. You can give it a custom-made look, without loosing the basic features of a social network. Neeetz takes this a little but bit further by letting you build a network pixel by pixel. That would convince me to opt for this service, as the more you give a social network its own face, the sooner people will feel connected to it, as it looks like a more distinct community, instead of yet another Facebook group rip-off.
And then, once you’ve built an active community, you might want to consider building a network yourself.
I hope you like that post!
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Written on May 15, 2008 – 11:20 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When you own a blog, you’re probably always looking for ways to create a bond with your readers. If your readers feel connected to you, they’ll probably comment and read more. Not to mention the power of word of mouth. A good way to create this sort of commitment is an integrated social network. There are several Wordpress plugins offering extra functions with a social network feel to it, yet it takes a lot of time, knowledge and effort to modify them to your needs. So I’m glad to tell you a new start-up has come along which offers an instant community for your convenience.
Patrick, Andreas Stephan from Six Groups, and undersigned
German-based Six Groups has developed an easy tool that allows you to include a community by just copy/pasting a javascript snippet. This adds a bar at the top of your page, showing a community lifestream, the number of users that are online and a sign-up button. You can customize the design by selecting a theme. As a user you have access to the regular social networks features, like a wall, lifestream and a personal library for photos and text documents. All in all, it’s a pretty neat community solution for bloggers and site owners who don’t have the budget for a totally-customized social network.
I met the Six Groups founders last night at the Facebook Developer Garage after party in Hamburg. They’re presenting at the Next08 conference today and already have an alpha version of their tool running on the Next08 site (So check that one out). When I was talking to co-founder Andreas Stephan, I immediately started thinking about the “yet another sign-up page”-tiredness. I’ve signed up to enough social networks already. So I said to him I’d only blog about his start-up if he promised to support OpenID. He did, so let’s see whether Six Groups lives up to it.
Written on February 20, 2008 – 2:29 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When starting a social service these days, you can’t just create an independent system anymore. You need to connect, aggregate and integrate. There’s just no way that you can ignore the Dataportability, OpenID and OpenSocial guys. They’re everywhere, coining the exact same terms I’ve used in the first sentences of this post. As Marc Canter cried out during Le Web 3: ‘We all want services to connect with each other!’
CEO Maria Sipka during the Data Sharing Summit
Later today, a new bridging-gaps service will launch. It’s called Linqia and it collects and lists detailed profiles of thousands of online communities and groups. Of course there’s a search option, so you can find the smallest and most hidden groups. Users can upload existing groups and rate and comment them. So, which services are following the trend and granted Linqia access? Co-founder and CEO Maria Sipka told me that Linqia has secured content from 18 communities and social networks - with names like XING, ecademy, Viadeo and Live Journal. Companies can sponsor community categories, which some - like Weblin, ESADE and AutoScout24 - are already willing to do.
Linqia wants to help people connect to other people, their interests and needs. Sounds pretty cool, and it gets better. Sipka told me about the social vision of Linqia: connect the developing world to the developed world through online communities and groups. When a community from a third-world country connects to the web with their 100 dollar laptop, chances are high they’ll be a bit overwhelmed by all the possibilities. Sipka asks us to imagine a community of farmers in Ghana. They want to use the web to find a group of experts on the topic of wheat and how to maximize the harvest amidst drought conditions. That’s where Linqia comes in. Through its search engine, the community would be able to find some helpful scientists who at the same time want to gather information from the farmers. The big challenge for Linqia here, is to reach those communities from the developing countries.
However, I don’t have any personal interest in wheat so I searched for a different community. Yet when I tried to find one of my favorite bands, the Babyshambles, I couldn’t find a group. Same thing happened when I searched for my favorite networking event OpenCoffee. So not all the obvious groups are there yet, but the idea of making them all available sounds like a good plan. Linqia will have to get big shots like Facebook and LinkedIn on board and let them open up their groups. So far, Facebook just counts as one community, yet it contains thousands of special interest groups. It’s necessary to be able to search through those groups as well if Linqia wants to fulfill the thousands of different wishes of its visitors.
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
