Two-year-old Me.dium (DEMO 07) brings another twist to the social networking scene. Not claiming to be a social network, Me.dium recently launched Me.dium Social Search as a way of "gaining social information based on the activity of others," said David Mandell, co-founder and vice president of marketing.
"It's the first 'crowd powered search engine,' getting information based on what other people have been searching," Mandell said.
Survival comes down to generating revenue.
"Revenue continues to be a challenge," Gillin said. "The advertising model is the most popular, but not necessarily the most desirable. Ads combined with premium (or) gated members seem to be best."
PeopleJam's Edelman agrees. "I don't think you can be successful these days with less than two million unique visitors [sessions] per month," he said. "For a social media site depending on revenue from advertising, anything less won't be successful. And you don't start getting into powerful business models until you're well over five million uniques per month."
One important change, notes Gillin, is that the cost of launching a Web site and services is dramatically less than it was a few years ago."Companies don't need huge amounts of venture capital and ads to survive. Guy Kawasaki launched his Trumors Web site for $13,000, where five years ago it would have cost him about a half a million."
Will niche social network players survive?
"That's unknown," states Owyang. "If they can get a thriving community, advertisers come in and fund it. For example, 'communities around cars' have a great opportunity. We'll definitely see a shake-out."
More news, commentary, and predictions from The Industry Standard:
- Prediction: Google makes bid for Digg
- Prediction: Google invests $1 billion in Facebook
- Analysis: The real problem with Google's Blogger service: Neglect
Reprinted with permission from Demo.com. Story copyright 2008 Demo.com Inc. All rights reserved.
Comments
We agree with this article in that people can get overwhelmed with more social network profiles, so creativity and originality are key to success. With Facebook and Myspace dominating that scene, it leaves many people without feeling a need to look elsewhere. However, we believe that the people surfing the internet should play a bigger role in the search results they receive, and that's why we believe in Me.dium.
Me.dium’s technology lets the inherent activity of real people - not robotic crawlers - determine relevance. While other search engines base relevance on how content links across pages, Me.dium’s Social Search shows you the most popular news, reviews, pictures and videos that other people are actually surfing and looking at. As people visit a site and spend time and attention on it, the site gets ranked higher within seconds. As a result, when you enter a search term, the Me.dium Search results are sorted and presented based on what people are actually looking at in relation to your search term.
We would love to hear your thoughts! (http://me.dium.com/search) Please email me with any questions, Jboyle@me.dium.com
100% agree, they are not over yet. Uniqueness, creativity & innovation can promote many more face books. Visit my brand new social network www.meetmylastname.com
hi!!! As for me zigime is better than other social networking because it has many unique features people can upload music, video, photos, barter, classifieds, mail, groups, jobs, events, blogs so on... and it has workspace too......nowadays more people are enjoying in zigime network
Post new comment