Online Communities: What’s New (2)

More on Ross Mayfield’s analysis of new generation of web-native online community tools :

  • Conversational Networks: blogs and journals
  • Explicit Networks, e.g. Ryze
  • Private Networks, e.g. Friendster
  • Physical Networks, e.g. Meet-up

It seems to me, though that these different services don’t represent standalone categories.
They’re features. They work best together.
I find blogs much more interesting to surf than profile databases like Ryze — you get a much richer picture of a person’s interests and personality from their blog.
It would be great to be able to navigate from a blog to the person’s contact information, add that person to one’s list of contacts, and invite them to be your contact (connecting the weblog with Ryze).
In the early days of word processing software, there were popular standalone spell checkers and standalone font packages. These tools got rolled into the standard word processor package.
I’m not saying necessarily that all of the tools will inevitably be glommed together, like a bloated Office Suite. Some features will merge into integrated products and services. There will continue piece parts, connected by open interfaces.
I think that these services work better together than separately, and are part of one emerging Social Software category.

2 thoughts on “Online Communities: What’s New (2)”

  1. Social Tools? Retail?

    Adina Levin posts a follow-up on Ross’s post. I find blogs much more interesting to surf than profile databases like Ryze — you get a much richer picture of a person’s interests and personality from their blog. Actually, this may…

  2. Social Tools? Retail?

    Adina Levin posts a follow-up on Ross’s post. I find blogs much more interesting to surf than profile databases like Ryze — you get a much richer picture of a person’s interests and personality from their blog. Actually, this may…

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