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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Is a corporate website/social network mashup inevitable?

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What is the evolutionary path of social networks? Blogs might hold the answer. In the early days of blogging, blogs were independent units, unafilliated with other web content. Sure, you could link to your blog from elsewhere, but they didn’t integrate into websites. Today, it’s not uncommon to see “blog” listed as a core element of a website (like this) or even serving as the home page of a site.

Social networks are like early blogs in that respect: isolated sites that don’t integrate with other web properties. When Toyota started a social network for hybrid car owners, it was given its own URL and its own distinct look and feel. Down the road, I think social networks will be integrated into other, broader websites.

The newly relaunched FastCompany website offers a glimpse of how this might work. FastCompany has always been on top of social networking, introducing its Company of Friends concept back in 1997, when MySpace only referred to that personal boundary you didn’t want anybody to invade. So it’s a natural step for the magazine to transform its online presence into a mashup of a website and a social network. I won’t be surprised to see other publications follow suit.

But what about businesses? For those companies with a large customer base made up partly of enthusiastic fans, why not extend the social network concept to the website at large? Unlike dedicated networks like Facebook, nobody would feel compelled to visit regularly. Because these networks would not be (in fact, could not be) walled gardens, RSS could be used to let members say up to date without visiting the site. The company’s most important customers would be in direct contact with the company, and vice versa, in a way that commenting on blogs could never achieve. Dell could do away with its IdeaStorm because customers would be generating ideas, commenting on them, engaging in conversations with employees about them, and ranking them directly on the site.

Clearly this wouldn’t work for every company. I don’t see the idea being a big success for Halliburton, for instance.

But take the auto industry as an example. Given General Motors’ commitment to social media, Toyota’s experiment with a social network, the moderate success of Edmunds’ CarSpace network, it’s obvious there are enough people passionate about cars—and passionate about the cars they own—to become members of a website where they can network with each other, car designers, product managers and other employees. The direct contact would create a tighter bond between company and customer. Groups could form around special interests. The intelligence generated for the company would be matched only by the sense of belonging that accrues to the members.

So, could GM’s website ever become part website, part social network, with the boundaries as blurred as they are between the network and the magazine content at FastCompany?

Why not?