December 26, 2008 at 12:52 A business that will survive the crisis or a new look at the social. the network
Foreword: Yesterday I met with one remarkable person who asked me to publish his article.
Purpose: assessment and verification of the reaction ... The
victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential election showed that Internet promotion is becoming an essential condition for social success. The Internet makes leaders and helps them win. Large-scale promotion in real life becomes extremely difficult without the accumulation of influence resources on the Internet.
Politicians and scientists, pop stars and writers, athletes and journalists are confidently living in virtual social networks. Not having a blog is already becoming almost indecent for members of the world elite. The latest striking example is the new US President Barack Obama, whom the journalists even called “candidate 2.0” during the election campaign and who owes a great deal of his victory to an unprecedented campaign to advance on the Web and the blogosphere.
Obama has chosen the most effective approach to communication on the Internet, creating a personal leadership social network dedicated to the upcoming elections. The participants in his network independently organized various events, actively participated in the campaign of their leader. The personal social network has helped Obama in many ways to mobilize the potential of supporters and successfully conduct the election campaign. World political history will now be divided into periods before and after the 2008 US presidential election. Now, many in the status elite of different countries of the world will understand that active work on the Internet is an inevitable condition for success.
So, representatives of the political, economic, creative elites are trying to overcome the abnormal situation of status inconsistency, to strengthen their position in the real world with high authority on the World Wide Web. Traditional personal websites and blogs cannot fully solve this problem. Obviously, more effective formats and methods of promotion on the Internet are required. New platforms for realizing the leaders' public potential will be their social networks, similar to the one organized by the newly elected US president.
Such projects may be of image or (and) commercial nature. That is, work to increase the status of a leader, implement his social tasks and (or) bring him material profit.
Companies providing social networking services, in this case, will have the opportunity to earn money by creating and maintaining leadership networks. They can be paid for it by the leaders themselves in the case of non-commercial image projects. But the most promising area of the social network business should be commercial leadership networks. These projects will be aimed at monetizing attention to the personalities and content of leaders of a large number of users. They will bring substantial income to the organizing companies. It is precisely behind them, in my opinion, the future of the social network business.
Social networks in reality and the Internet
In the real world, social networks are an instrument of social exchange and are based on horizontal and vertical exchange chains connecting their participants. In horizontal chains, participants exchange equivalent resources - for example, equivalent labor efforts or social resources. A vertical hierarchy is formed on the basis of the level of control over a key network resource. At the top - the owners of the maximum control, at the bottom - the minimum.
Stable networks are often built around people or structures that control a key resource exchanged by network participants (power, authority, money, etc.). Leaders exchange this key resource for the resources of participants. Such networks have a pyramidal structure [1].
Similarly, more complex social organizations are being built: from the company to the state (see table).
Often, the network is also a means of social mobility. A participant can access a key resource of the network and become one of its leaders. An ordinary party member has a hypothetical chance of becoming a politician. A fan of stars - to draw attention to yourself and become a star. The employee of the company - to break into the leadership.
Social sharing within the network is not an end in itself. Network structures always have an external ideal task common to all network members. Leaders unite people for the sake of: achieving power (party), supporting athletes (fans), worshiping stars (fans), making money (company), maintaining order (state), performing religious rites (church), etc., etc. Participants under their leadership realize common collective goals. If this does not happen, the network sooner or later breaks up, people leave, leaders are overthrown.
The network, depending on its purpose, creates an exclusive cultural context, environment, style: from brutal for fans to glamorous for fans of pop stars.
The large social networks on the Internet that exist today (from Odnoklassniki to LJ) are a chaotic pile of people connected by horizontal disordered communications. This is essentially not a network, but a crowd randomly assembled in one place.
The future of the leadership networks of the
Internet is not a new reality, but a cast of the existing social world. Networks on the Internet will be built on the same principles as in reality. They will inevitably form around resource leaders. A key resource in such networks is content. Generators of content (new knowledge, creative achievements, information) exchange it for the attention of other users, which can be monetized (converted to paid services or sold to advertisers).
Content generators are most likely to become leaders in social networks. Their resources on the network can be called nodes of attention of users. Leadership networks on the Internet will be created around these resources [2].
Moreover, at first this role will be best mastered by real social leaders. After all, it is the information coming from them and about them that attracts the most attention of users.
Among the creators of resource-nodes of attention can be leaders of real communities (professional, consumer, amateur, political, religious), stars (show business, science, medicine, art, business), specialists in various fields, writers, journalists, as well as active consumers sharing valuable consumer information with users.
Such resources can be created not only by individuals, but also by companies that have exclusive information channels (media, parties, think tanks).
Leader networks will enable organizing companies to earn money by selling advertising and various network services.
They will allow leaders to solve image and social problems by creating a personal network of supporters and interested parties. In addition, owners of leadership resources will also be able to monetize public attention to their own person. For example, receive, in agreement with the organizing company, part of the network’s revenues. And also make money selling to fans directly through the resource of their own creative products.
Users using these networks will be able to communicate with stars and leaders, observe the events in their life and work, and also receive high-quality information on various areas of human activity in direct dialogue with the best specialists. It is also important that users will be able to demonstrate their own creative and social achievements to reference persons (owners of attention nodes resources). And thanks to this they will get a chance for social advancement in the real world.
Types of
Leader Networks Leader networks can be:
In the first case, a personal or corporate website acts as a network interface. Users register on it and get the opportunity to create their own blogs. They communicate with the owner of the site and with each other, participate in joint collective social actions. Such leadership networks will become a new generation of personal resources, after sites and blogs on social networks [3].
In the second case, the network is formed around a number of leadership resources and is united by a common goal, style, thematic social environment [4].
Social network services for leader networks The
main task of social network companies in leader networks is to help create and maintain attention nodes resources.
Organizing companies should motivate leaders to participate in networks and ensure their effective communication with other users. Everyone wants to attract stars for the effective development of networks, but no one knows how to do it. Probably the most important motivation is financial. Companies will have to share part of their revenue with leaders.
Stars are often lost in an alien Internet environment. They have no time to blog, communicate with visitors. In order for “star” resources to “play”, network companies need to rid leaders of problems with creating and maintaining blogs, network communications.
It is also important to form a harmonious combination of the theme and style of the network: its image, content, communication architecture. Without this, even the brightest leaders will not be interesting to users. For example, pop stars attract attention primarily in the bright, glamorous environment created especially for them (as in glossy magazines and on TV). Therefore, in LiveJournal or on the My World network, stars “don’t work”, they are lost and fade. In the new leadership networks, their “worlds” resources must be created using exclusive design, 3D-graphics, and fashionable technologies.
It is necessary not only to “lure” interesting characters into the network, but also to help them make their own attractive resource. The company's goal is to create leadership resources that reinforce public interest in their owners with their high technological and artistic level.
For other, “ordinary” users, the organizing companies need to create intranet communication tools that give a chance for social success (contests, direct communication with leaders, etc.).
To make their resource popular, leaders must constantly communicate online with users. Without outside help, this task is impossible. To solve it, constant content support from the organizing company is required. Centralized support is much more efficient and economical than the work of individual personal assistants. Within the framework of social networking companies, teams of content managers can be created working closely with owners of leadership resources. With their help, the operational support of communications of a significant number of leadership resources in the network can be carried out [5].
The content and style of the network must be consistent with each other. Compare the three possible options for leadership networks [6].
Media and corporations as leader networks
Online versions of print media can also organize their work as a leader social network. Blogs of journalists will become the nodes of attention of this network. Readers-bloggers will be able to communicate online with the editorial staff and discuss publications and news.
At the same time, the media will retain a unique style and image. Vedomosti will remain a business, and AiF a national newspaper. The media will not lose their own editorial policy, but it will be implemented through the blogs of journalists. Simply, media employees will know that they are paid not only for writing materials, but also for maintaining their own blog, communicating with readers, and answering their questions.
As in other leadership networks, the institution of social mobility can be envisaged in the work of online versions of newspapers and magazines. The distinguished users, whose blogs will be the most interesting, will be published in a paper version of the publication and even invited there for permanent work.
Corporations, like other social structures, can create their Internet versions in the form of a leadership network. Such a network may consist of a closed internal corporate network and an open network for communication with consumers and partners.
Organization of the company as a network allows you to save on rent, manage staff more efficiently, and establish direct contact with consumers to promote and sell goods and services. The social network of the company will allow consumers to receive independent information about goods and services from their network partners, to purchase products directly without intermediaries.
Why the crisis is not terrible for leadership networks
Unlike regular websites, blogs on networks and standalone blogs, a new kind of leadership resources creates a personal social network around itself. This network includes representatives of the audience intended for the owner of the resource (its fans, supporters, interested parties). The formation of such a network provides stable interactive communication with visitors, the ability to have a permanent impact on their consumer and social behavior. Communication in the leadership network creates the effect of the emotional association of users around the leader in the "one team", "common business".
Compared to personal websites and blogs, leadership resources have higher interactivity, more efficiently form a communication environment, and give visitors better opportunities for self-expression.
Unlike blogs on ordinary networks (such as LJ), they exist in a specially created favorable environment where it is impossible to get lost or be compromised by an inadequate network environment; give their authors the opportunity to monetize the attention of visitors.
There are no open networks focused on communication with leaders on the Internet. I am sure that in the near future they will appear and become one of the most popular resources.
Companies that create and maintain leadership networks will not only be able to stay afloat during the crisis, but will also achieve impressive success. After all, these networks will help people realize their aspirations that are relevant in any economic situation: make a career, earn money, engage in creativity, follow the life of stars, communicate with their idols, receive exclusive information from specialists, and together with like-minded people solve common social problems.
Link to the article Business that will survive the crisis
Briefly about a wonderful person:
Eidman Igor Vilenovich - sociologist, author of the book “Breakthrough into the Future. Sociology of the Internet Revolution ”, articles and reports on the development of the Internet and social networks. Currently, he is engaged in the practical implementation of projects of leadership social networks. Among them:
Ps hope positive feedback
Purpose: assessment and verification of the reaction ... The
victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential election showed that Internet promotion is becoming an essential condition for social success. The Internet makes leaders and helps them win. Large-scale promotion in real life becomes extremely difficult without the accumulation of influence resources on the Internet.
Politicians and scientists, pop stars and writers, athletes and journalists are confidently living in virtual social networks. Not having a blog is already becoming almost indecent for members of the world elite. The latest striking example is the new US President Barack Obama, whom the journalists even called “candidate 2.0” during the election campaign and who owes a great deal of his victory to an unprecedented campaign to advance on the Web and the blogosphere.
Obama has chosen the most effective approach to communication on the Internet, creating a personal leadership social network dedicated to the upcoming elections. The participants in his network independently organized various events, actively participated in the campaign of their leader. The personal social network has helped Obama in many ways to mobilize the potential of supporters and successfully conduct the election campaign. World political history will now be divided into periods before and after the 2008 US presidential election. Now, many in the status elite of different countries of the world will understand that active work on the Internet is an inevitable condition for success.
So, representatives of the political, economic, creative elites are trying to overcome the abnormal situation of status inconsistency, to strengthen their position in the real world with high authority on the World Wide Web. Traditional personal websites and blogs cannot fully solve this problem. Obviously, more effective formats and methods of promotion on the Internet are required. New platforms for realizing the leaders' public potential will be their social networks, similar to the one organized by the newly elected US president.
Such projects may be of image or (and) commercial nature. That is, work to increase the status of a leader, implement his social tasks and (or) bring him material profit.
Companies providing social networking services, in this case, will have the opportunity to earn money by creating and maintaining leadership networks. They can be paid for it by the leaders themselves in the case of non-commercial image projects. But the most promising area of the social network business should be commercial leadership networks. These projects will be aimed at monetizing attention to the personalities and content of leaders of a large number of users. They will bring substantial income to the organizing companies. It is precisely behind them, in my opinion, the future of the social network business.
Social networks in reality and the Internet
In the real world, social networks are an instrument of social exchange and are based on horizontal and vertical exchange chains connecting their participants. In horizontal chains, participants exchange equivalent resources - for example, equivalent labor efforts or social resources. A vertical hierarchy is formed on the basis of the level of control over a key network resource. At the top - the owners of the maximum control, at the bottom - the minimum.
Stable networks are often built around people or structures that control a key resource exchanged by network participants (power, authority, money, etc.). Leaders exchange this key resource for the resources of participants. Such networks have a pyramidal structure [1].
Similarly, more complex social organizations are being built: from the company to the state (see table).
Often, the network is also a means of social mobility. A participant can access a key resource of the network and become one of its leaders. An ordinary party member has a hypothetical chance of becoming a politician. A fan of stars - to draw attention to yourself and become a star. The employee of the company - to break into the leadership.
Social sharing within the network is not an end in itself. Network structures always have an external ideal task common to all network members. Leaders unite people for the sake of: achieving power (party), supporting athletes (fans), worshiping stars (fans), making money (company), maintaining order (state), performing religious rites (church), etc., etc. Participants under their leadership realize common collective goals. If this does not happen, the network sooner or later breaks up, people leave, leaders are overthrown.
The network, depending on its purpose, creates an exclusive cultural context, environment, style: from brutal for fans to glamorous for fans of pop stars.
The large social networks on the Internet that exist today (from Odnoklassniki to LJ) are a chaotic pile of people connected by horizontal disordered communications. This is essentially not a network, but a crowd randomly assembled in one place.
The future of the leadership networks of the
Internet is not a new reality, but a cast of the existing social world. Networks on the Internet will be built on the same principles as in reality. They will inevitably form around resource leaders. A key resource in such networks is content. Generators of content (new knowledge, creative achievements, information) exchange it for the attention of other users, which can be monetized (converted to paid services or sold to advertisers).
Content generators are most likely to become leaders in social networks. Their resources on the network can be called nodes of attention of users. Leadership networks on the Internet will be created around these resources [2].
Moreover, at first this role will be best mastered by real social leaders. After all, it is the information coming from them and about them that attracts the most attention of users.
Among the creators of resource-nodes of attention can be leaders of real communities (professional, consumer, amateur, political, religious), stars (show business, science, medicine, art, business), specialists in various fields, writers, journalists, as well as active consumers sharing valuable consumer information with users.
Such resources can be created not only by individuals, but also by companies that have exclusive information channels (media, parties, think tanks).
Leader networks will enable organizing companies to earn money by selling advertising and various network services.
They will allow leaders to solve image and social problems by creating a personal network of supporters and interested parties. In addition, owners of leadership resources will also be able to monetize public attention to their own person. For example, receive, in agreement with the organizing company, part of the network’s revenues. And also make money selling to fans directly through the resource of their own creative products.
Users using these networks will be able to communicate with stars and leaders, observe the events in their life and work, and also receive high-quality information on various areas of human activity in direct dialogue with the best specialists. It is also important that users will be able to demonstrate their own creative and social achievements to reference persons (owners of attention nodes resources). And thanks to this they will get a chance for social advancement in the real world.
Types of
Leader Networks Leader networks can be:
- social networks formed around a personal or corporate interactive resource;
- social networks built around several resources - nodes of attention.
In the first case, a personal or corporate website acts as a network interface. Users register on it and get the opportunity to create their own blogs. They communicate with the owner of the site and with each other, participate in joint collective social actions. Such leadership networks will become a new generation of personal resources, after sites and blogs on social networks [3].
In the second case, the network is formed around a number of leadership resources and is united by a common goal, style, thematic social environment [4].
Social network services for leader networks The
main task of social network companies in leader networks is to help create and maintain attention nodes resources.
Organizing companies should motivate leaders to participate in networks and ensure their effective communication with other users. Everyone wants to attract stars for the effective development of networks, but no one knows how to do it. Probably the most important motivation is financial. Companies will have to share part of their revenue with leaders.
Stars are often lost in an alien Internet environment. They have no time to blog, communicate with visitors. In order for “star” resources to “play”, network companies need to rid leaders of problems with creating and maintaining blogs, network communications.
It is also important to form a harmonious combination of the theme and style of the network: its image, content, communication architecture. Without this, even the brightest leaders will not be interesting to users. For example, pop stars attract attention primarily in the bright, glamorous environment created especially for them (as in glossy magazines and on TV). Therefore, in LiveJournal or on the My World network, stars “don’t work”, they are lost and fade. In the new leadership networks, their “worlds” resources must be created using exclusive design, 3D-graphics, and fashionable technologies.
It is necessary not only to “lure” interesting characters into the network, but also to help them make their own attractive resource. The company's goal is to create leadership resources that reinforce public interest in their owners with their high technological and artistic level.
For other, “ordinary” users, the organizing companies need to create intranet communication tools that give a chance for social success (contests, direct communication with leaders, etc.).
To make their resource popular, leaders must constantly communicate online with users. Without outside help, this task is impossible. To solve it, constant content support from the organizing company is required. Centralized support is much more efficient and economical than the work of individual personal assistants. Within the framework of social networking companies, teams of content managers can be created working closely with owners of leadership resources. With their help, the operational support of communications of a significant number of leadership resources in the network can be carried out [5].
The content and style of the network must be consistent with each other. Compare the three possible options for leadership networks [6].
Media and corporations as leader networks
Online versions of print media can also organize their work as a leader social network. Blogs of journalists will become the nodes of attention of this network. Readers-bloggers will be able to communicate online with the editorial staff and discuss publications and news.
At the same time, the media will retain a unique style and image. Vedomosti will remain a business, and AiF a national newspaper. The media will not lose their own editorial policy, but it will be implemented through the blogs of journalists. Simply, media employees will know that they are paid not only for writing materials, but also for maintaining their own blog, communicating with readers, and answering their questions.
As in other leadership networks, the institution of social mobility can be envisaged in the work of online versions of newspapers and magazines. The distinguished users, whose blogs will be the most interesting, will be published in a paper version of the publication and even invited there for permanent work.
Corporations, like other social structures, can create their Internet versions in the form of a leadership network. Such a network may consist of a closed internal corporate network and an open network for communication with consumers and partners.
Organization of the company as a network allows you to save on rent, manage staff more efficiently, and establish direct contact with consumers to promote and sell goods and services. The social network of the company will allow consumers to receive independent information about goods and services from their network partners, to purchase products directly without intermediaries.
Why the crisis is not terrible for leadership networks
Unlike regular websites, blogs on networks and standalone blogs, a new kind of leadership resources creates a personal social network around itself. This network includes representatives of the audience intended for the owner of the resource (its fans, supporters, interested parties). The formation of such a network provides stable interactive communication with visitors, the ability to have a permanent impact on their consumer and social behavior. Communication in the leadership network creates the effect of the emotional association of users around the leader in the "one team", "common business".
Compared to personal websites and blogs, leadership resources have higher interactivity, more efficiently form a communication environment, and give visitors better opportunities for self-expression.
Unlike blogs on ordinary networks (such as LJ), they exist in a specially created favorable environment where it is impossible to get lost or be compromised by an inadequate network environment; give their authors the opportunity to monetize the attention of visitors.
There are no open networks focused on communication with leaders on the Internet. I am sure that in the near future they will appear and become one of the most popular resources.
Companies that create and maintain leadership networks will not only be able to stay afloat during the crisis, but will also achieve impressive success. After all, these networks will help people realize their aspirations that are relevant in any economic situation: make a career, earn money, engage in creativity, follow the life of stars, communicate with their idols, receive exclusive information from specialists, and together with like-minded people solve common social problems.
Link to the article Business that will survive the crisis
Briefly about a wonderful person:
Eidman Igor Vilenovich - sociologist, author of the book “Breakthrough into the Future. Sociology of the Internet Revolution ”, articles and reports on the development of the Internet and social networks. Currently, he is engaged in the practical implementation of projects of leadership social networks. Among them:
- glossy online magazine (blogs of stars, their fans and young talents);
- mutual information and joint shopping consumer network;
- social television program (blogs of TV channels, TV stars and viewers);
- "Duma 2.0." Personal network for politicians, their supporters and voters;
- corporate and personal leadership networks.
Ps hope positive feedback