Just as marketers are finally figuring out what the heck facebook is and why they should be embracing the platform as a way of reaching & engaging their customers and potential customers, there is a new trend developing that may impact facebook and other social mediums…

Enter social aggregators.

Aggregators won’t replace facebook - but much like RSS feeds have supplemented users visting websites directly, social aggregator services could mean marketers looking to reach and engage people through social media sites like facebook will find a smaller direct audience to engage with.

I’ve signed up with socialthing and others are raving about feedfriend. Both do about the same thing - they take updates from all your social media sites like flickr, facebook, twitter, yelp, linkedin and stream them as one interface in something called a “lifestream.”

The idea is great - instead of checking for updates on multiple sites, you can get them all at once - much like how i use Netvibes or Protopage to aggregate all my RSS feeds.

Personally I get everything I need from Netvibes. 

I can add twitter or facebook status updates to Netvibes… and i don’t really care for the extra features social aggregators include such as comments on the different feeds. When I also consider the fact that most of my friends aren’t as geeked out as I am on ‘web 2.0′, it makes even less sense. Just getting my friends on facebook was a monumental task.

Having said that, the mobile interface for Socialthing is a thing of beauty.

They also have an optimized interface for the iphone which makes checking out lifestreams on the go a pleasant experience.

I have a hard enough time keeping up with my RSS feeds (270 currently) - I’m not sure I have enough time (or care enough) to follow the lifestream of every person i know. Having said that, it could be really useful if you are stalking following a few choice people…

How can marketers get in on this?

Websites got around a similar issue when RSS feeds became popular by not including all the content in the feed - so users who liked the lead content were driven back to the site… where sponsored ads could be displayed in all their glory.

One suggestion - build your own branded social aggregator…. and include your own relevant content as one of the feeds.

I could see this working really well for Automotive, Financial, Pharma, Retail… well pretty much any brand looking to participate in & influence a person’s lifestream.

Social Media has really evolved over the last 12 months. 

Arguably it started when facebook opened up their platform to developers.  

The number of applications went from 8 to hundreds within weeks and the level of user engagement increased and accelerated.  

Many other major social media sites followed facebook’s lead and announced plans to open up their platform too… most notably Google’s Open Social announcement near the end of the year which had the promise of portability of applications and widgets across multiple platforms.

Many other sites that were struggling to match the pace of facebook’s growth declared that they would also join Open Social so that collectively they could change the landscape of social media once again (maybe this time in their favour).  

There was just one major barrier 

facebook’s social graph meant that people would not easily or quickly leave facebook for another platform - not after investing so much time and effort into creating networks and connecting to friends, family and colleagues. 

As blogged on this site (see links below), it’s unlikely that consumers will abandon or share their online social media time with facebook until their data assets built within facebook became portable to other sites. 

Enter dataportability.org 

Their philosophy is that you own your own data - so you should have the right to do with it as you see fit…like export or port it to another platform, tool, or application. Check out their mission statement here. 

As of now, the group is no more than a round table of smart people looking for a way to materialize a vision…. but what’s interesting is who has joined the round table discussion.  As of today, key people from LinkedIn, Flickr, SixApart, Google, facebook and Twitter have joined the conversation.

If this turns out to be more than a PR stunt, this has the potential to be the biggest story of 2008 as true identity portability means we can take our social equity and use it however we see fit - and where ever.

That’s what I’d call Social Media 2.0

Or Identity 2.0

Whatever you want to call it - this is a significant signal that the digital social media space will continue to evolve at a rapid pace this year and we all stand to benefit from this.  

Need to catch up on the conversation? Here are links to some of my previous articles that referenced portability of identity and identity 2.0:  

• Identity 2.0 - where does it begin?
• Open Social not cause for open celebreation….yet

As reported by Michael Garrett at profy, LinkedIn plans to release a developer API platform that would allow people to create new widgets or applications for LinkedIn - similar to what facebook did this year and what other sites such as MySpace and Friendster have announced they will do in order to slow down user migration to other social networking sites.  Although there are some great potential outcomes of this announcement, there are a few reasons why I believe their strategy needs further evaluation: 

1) Creating a walled garden within a walled garden. Applications developed on the new API platform must first get reviewed and approved before they can be made available to the community. This will stifle innovation. Let developers build what they want and let the community of LinkedIn users decide what is relevant or not.  

2) Developers will have to share revenue with LinkedIn…which is the opposite of where the industry is going. Given the user migration to facebook from other platforms in the last 8 months (LinkedIn included), why would a developer focus energy on a restrictive environment when they can create professional based applications and reap all the benefits from it on facebook? facebook is not just about sending electronic hamburgers… it’s increasingly also about professionals connecting in a simple, user-friendly environment where they make their own decisions on what is relevant or not.  Developers should be rewarded for their innovation.  

3) LinkedIn is not about engagement. Or community. As quoted on profy, they are not trying to get users to come back to the site multiple times a day. If you’re not trying to create engagement you aren’t going to increase your social graph. Isn’t social networking about engagement? If you are marketing a product or service, would you rather integrate it within a community like facebook that sees nearly 50% of their users return every day for at least 20 minutes, or with a site like LinkedIn that doesn’t care if you come back with any regular or predicted frequency?

4) Charging for premium services. Information should be free. LinkedIn still charges for their premium services. Free is a business model.  People are making money by giving stuff away and profiting from the engagement created.  Mitch Joel highlighted this in a recent post here.

Having said all of the above, there is great potential for LinkedIn to create something special and of value by allowing developers to create LinkedIn widgets that can be exported to other websites (even to facebook) with no restrictions, review processes, or threat of revenue sharing.

The future of social networking includes the idea of portability of identity - to other mediums (like mobile) and to other communities. Creating easy to export widgets that go beyond linking to somebody’s profile page on LinkedIn and creates true engagement based on permissions and profiling could create a massive increase in LinkedIn’s social graph….which they can profit from without taxing developers or their commmunity users. 

Understanding that LinkedIn has some specific goals with their new platform, they can still achieve them more transparently by offering rewards or incentives to developers for applications or widgets that meet specific criteria or goals in line with what they think people want.

Image credit: Pulse2.0 

LinkdedIn has sometimes been referred to as the “facebook” for professionals as the majority of registered users are over the age of 30. Now that facebook has grown up and grown beyond college social networking, is LinkedIn still relevant?  

With over 14 million subscribers in over 400 economic regions (as defined by LinkedIn), at first glance it would appear that the site is doing pretty well… although when put into perspective with a site like facebook that has nearly 40 million users as of September 2007 with the vast majority being at least weekly or monthly active users, LinkedIn seems less relevant.  A survey of my LinkedIn network reveals that most of my contacts rarely access the site and have found little value overall in being a member of their network. The reason?  LinkedIn was a good concept, but it was never a great website or experience. Now that we’ve all built up our social equity in other sites such as facebook, LinkedIn no longer seems relevant.

5 reasons why LinkedIn is no longer relevant (or 5 things they can do to regain relevance):

1) It’s not a community site by today’s standards. Where are the community tools? It would be nice to see RSS feeds and more ways for user generated content to be incorporated into the site.  How about a people map to visually link people in your network together? I’ve seen / experienced this done to great affect in other tools such as those offered by Leverage Software. If the tool is all about making connections or finding professinal matches, offer a visual way to see who is in your network…and offer filtering tools to change the view based on your preferences. The site needs to be more than a business card scan repository if you want engagement and relevance.

2) There is no mobile website - which is ridiculous when many “business” users have a blackberry or other PDA device and are already using the mobile web to access information and mobile email to keep in touch with contacts.  Having a mobile website that is built for the mobile web is now table steaks for any social networking site.  There are also no SMS alerts for when people in your network ask questions, send email & request updates etc. 

3) The current user interface and overall user experience is dated. The UI needs to be more intuitive. Give the site a new look, add some personality and make it easier to move around the site. A better user experience = more engagement which will lead to more social equity in the site.

4) Fee-based system. The free service is not bad…but why make the best features available only through the pay model? This restricts usage, engagement, and it’s social graph.  Web 2.0 sites are giving away everything away for free…so why pay anything for what is essentially a contact management website?

5) No unique or compelling offer. As marketers, we know in order for a campaign to succeed we need a strong call to action to get somebody’s attention - but if the product is not unique, people will not stay engaged. Try putting lipstick on a pig… people will still see that it’s a pig - albeit a more attractive one?  LinkedIn offers a way for people to look for jobs, find answers to their business questions and build their online reputation. The problem is that other sites do a much better job at this too - like monster.com for jobs and yahoo answers. Create something better…something unique and the social graph will get better.

If you believe like me that it’s time to link out of Linkedin…you better get started as it may take some time. Unlike other social media platforms, there is no automated way to disable your account and remove your profile from the LinkedIn system. You have to submit a customer support ticket to be removed. 

At least they are consistent.

UPDATE 9/25/07 - Just came across an interesting article on this topic over at brand and market blogspot

UPDATE 9/27/07 - Check out book on LinkedIn entitled “I’m on LinkedIn…now what?” by Jason Alba