Creating social network sites for your organisation's customers: choices and issues

I read two interesting blogposts today about the issues and choices involved for organisations implementing social networking sites applications

Michael Webb, the head of IT and media services at Newport University, blogged that when your organisation sets up a social networking site for staff or customers (or in his case, students) you face the choice of either:

• developing and hosting your own application
• piggy-backing on an existing, externally hosted application like Facebook
• using an externally hosted 'design your own social networking site' such as Ning

Newport University wanted to set up a social networking application for its future students, so that they could meet each other and their student mentors online, before they came to the university. 

They decided to use Ning.

Michael describes the pros and cons of taking this approach

• Speed:  it took days to set up.  If they had hosted and built their own social networking environment it would have taken weeks or months.
• Cost:  Ning will charge them once they go above 10GB of storage, but it won't cost much

The disadvantages are:

• The Universtity can't develop the functionality to the site.  Ning controls the future development of the funtionality.   Newport University have received requests from users for developments and tweaks to the system, but they can't do anything with them

• Ning pushes advertising to the sites  (you have to pay if you want to get rid of them)

• The terms and conditions are drawn up by Ning (though Newport University didn't have too much of a problem with them as Ning acknowledges that they own the content, and the data in question isn't business critical)

Michael seems happy with the way that the site is turning out.  Users can display their profile and set up new groups and events.  They have over a hundred members of staff and students up and running with it and are just about to invite the forthcoming students. I look forward to reading up dates on Michael's blog.  (and thanks to Brian Kelly for the link).

Read Write Web put up an interesting blog post yesterday entitled Corporate Social Networks are a waste of money .  They quote a Deloitte report that looked at social network applications set up by companies to encourage their customers to form a social network around their brand. These sites have been set up to build a brand, so a lot of money has been sent on their design to ensure that the sites reflect brand design values. Deloitte say that nearly 60% of the companies concerned spent over $1million on their sites.  But the money seems to be wasted:  Deloitte discovered that 35% of these sites have less than 100 members.  Read Write Web pours scorn on the whole idea: it questions why people would want to network around a brand, and is particularly withering about Nestle Purina's attempt to create a social networking site for customers of its cat litter. 

I agree with Read Write Web here:  even where there is a brand I am loyal to (like Fulham football club) there is no compelling reason for me to contribute to the social networking site provided by the brand owner: I can just as happily contribute to a site or message board set up by fellow fans.

James Lappin

Comments

[Simon Carswell]

IMO Michael Webb has got it right: the convenience, economy and speed of a pre-existing SaaS solution will beat the greater flexibility of the DIY approach every time for most people.

As for the cat-litter style 'social networks', no surprises they are failing. Those companies that set them up probably don't appreciate that they can't control what's being said about their brand. The Fulham FC point's a valid one: there are plenty of fora out there on the Web (2.0) for consumers to comment. I'm a regular on a motorcycling forum, where people often post about products they've bought, whether to do with motorcycling or not.

[James Lappin]

I agree with you Simon, no point in re-inventing the wheel if you don't have to. The million dollar question when deciding whether or not to set up a social network site is this: can you come up with a compelling reason that will motivate your target audience to contribute to the site? It is not enough just to give people a chance to network, there are a million places they can do that already on the web. Newport's Ning project looks a fair bet to succeed because Michael has recruited university staff and student mentors onto the site first: these will be the bait to catch the future students. It is safe to assume that there is no other place on the web were so many of the key people that future students will be dealing with are gathered in one place.