The Rise and Popularity of Specialist Social Networks

Take a close look at the picture above and what do you see ? At the outer fringes you will find brands that are now so widely known that they are an intrinsic part of your lives (so I would assume if you are reading this post). Studies indicate that the first thing young women do in the morning is to check their Facebook accounts for updates (as reported by Mashable here). Not till long ago, taking a break from work to explore and travel the world was considered an adventure and an achievement. These days, shutting down your Facebook account and living without it for a month is considered to be a big deal (interesting read Facebook Refugee).

Coming to Twitter, the platform now has more than 75 million users with 50 million tweets being sent per day. People are using twitter as motivational tools to lose weight, run a marathon, quit smoking and what not (read here for more). We even came across an interesting tweet the other day, indicating how tweeting very frequently can be a bad habit:

RT @social_yogirl: Warning – For ur driver’s test. If the guy asks “what do you do at a red light?” ,don’t say… a little tweeting…

And then, foursquare recently reported to signing up 3 million members and LinkedIn too has close to 75 million members and is a highly important tool for job seekers, executive recruiters, MBA students and networking professionals.

But then, most of these are broad social networks which cater to everyone and thus have no specific segmentation amongst its users. Little wonder then, that the success of these networks would lead to other innovations catering to certain specific audiences such as mothers, people who like to travel, MBA students, students starting college and much more.

We like to call these networks “Specialist Social Networks” as they cater to an audience that satisfy a set of characteristics such as age, sex, occupation, future outlook etc. At last count this sheet indicated that their were close to 193 such networks on the Internet comprising of categories such as travel, education, beer, food, business, photography, cars, sports, dating, pets, arts, mothers and many more.

For instance, CafeMom is an online community where millions of moms meet each day to talk, share advice, make new friends and play games. The network employs 65 people in New York, gets millions of unique vistors every month and raised close to 12 million in capital in early 2008. So if you have a brand aimed at pregnant mothers or new mothers such as Babo Botanicals or Nutrabella then CafeMom is where you want your brand to be.

The NYtimes recently carried this article on another Specialist social network called URoomSurf. An excerpt:

Bright Eyes and Regina Spektor share the same bedtime (between 10 p.m. and midnight) and a high tolerance for clutter. They both eat vegetarian food, advocate for animal rights, play guitar and favor the same indie rock acts. They also recently agreed on a polka dot shower curtain.

This is not just great good luck — theirs was a match made on URoomSurf.com, a Web site that does for dormitory life what eHarmony and Match.com have long done for romance.

The article later goes on state that since the site started in February, more than 80,000 students from 700 colleges have signed up, paying $5 or $10 (depending on the level of access to information). Now that’s a pretty good Online Business for what could also be a Facebook group that connects people with similar interests looking to be room mates in college.

Finally, another such network based out of London runs a slightly different model and aims to bridge the gap between schools and students looking to study in those schools. BusinessBecause, is a London based startup that is a news & networking site for the b-school world. It provides interesting content and helps to connect people before, during and after business school. The network has pioneered a new concept of ‘community journalism‘ where its members who are essentially students studying in B-school or B-school alumni are encouraged to share stories of their school experience, favorite lectures, classmates etc.

The website also has its own Editorial team comprising of Journalists from the world’s leading Journalism schools such as Columbia who produces great quality content, conduct interviews with Business schools professors, thought leaders and much more. The website targets international, smart, web-savvy and well-connected individuals between the age of 22-32 interested in Business School education.

Well, these niche networks mentioned above are just the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty more out there. So if you’re looking to connect with a group of people who share a similar interest as you, then just do some Internet research and its likely that you’ll find a “Specialist Social Network” catering to your particular interest.

Sms,Email,Twitter etc – Technologies That Save Lives

In the days of yore(upto the late 80′s) when there used to be a war in any part of the world or even in your own country, the only way to know about what was happening was through newspapers and radio. Indian parents who grow up during the 1960′s and 1970′s and witnessed numerous wars in the country, still narrate incidents of how they used dive into huge pits and bunkers that were dug at various places whenever they heard a plane pass by or any other loud sound.

Today, as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21^st century it is interesting to see the manner in which our lives have been transformed thanks to some amazing innovations and technologies. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in the 19^th century he would not have imagined that it would one day evolve into something that would enable a doctor working in the Democratic Republic Of Congo(DRC) to successfully complete an operation with detailed instructions from his colleague in London.

Vascular surgeon David Nott(who volunteers for Medicins Sans Frantieres for a month each year in Africa’s troubled Democratic Republic of Congo) had a 16 year-old patient whose arm had been ripped off, causing a wound that had become infected and gangrenous, leaving the teenage boy with just days to live. Nott realised that in order to save the child he would have to perform an operation called a forequarter amputation, involving the removal of the shoulder and collar bone; an operation that he had never before undertaken. So he texted a colleague back in London, who had previously carried out the procedure, and received step by step instructions back over SMS.

The cause of the child’s injuries was not clear, with some suggesting he had been bitten by a hippopotamus and other reports claiming he had been caught in the gun fighting that riddles the nation. 1,200 people die each day in the DRC from the conflict, according to the BBC, more than half of them children. Happily, the teenager on whom David Nott performed his first forequarter amputation made a full recovery. An interesting fact associated with DRC is that it has a very close relationship with the cellular industry, home as it is to significant quantities of coltan, an ore used to produce tantalum, which is used in the production of mobile phones.

Another case in point are the recent terror attacks in Mumbai. Mr. Shanbhag, who lives in Boston but happened to be in Mumbai when the attacks began on 26^th November, Wednesday, described the gunfire on his Twitter feed the thud, thud, thud of shotguns and the short bursts of automatic weapons. At the peak of the mumbai violence, more than one message per second with the word Mumbai in it was being posted onto Twitter, a short-message service that has evolved from an oddity to a full-fledged news platform in just two years. Those descriptions and others on Web sites and photo-sharing sites served as a chaotic but critically important link among people across the world whether they be Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn tracking the fate of a rabbi held hostage at the Nariman House or students in Britain with loved ones back in India or people hanging on every twist and turn in the standoff while visiting relatives for Thanksgiving dinner.

When you look at TV, you see one channel at a time, then you go to another channel, said Dina Mehta, an ethnographer and social media consultant in Mumbai. On Twitter, you get feeds from many different people at the same time.Citizen journalists avoided some of the bureaucratic headaches faced by media organizations (As reported by NYTimes, read here for more).

The above just goes to show the power of the Mobile Phone today. So a big thumbs up for all the Cell Phone manufacturers who have used their expertise and skill to create such products. Perhaps the government can learn from this and equip their critical forces with such technologies, cause in today’s world technology can be used to save lives and avert crisis.