As part of the recent debate that Shel Holtz and I had in the comments section of an earlier post I had made, Holtz provided me with this link to an article about how users of social networks have little or no brand loyalty.
However, rather than reinforce the idea that niche social networks have their place, this article made me think that investing time in them is a waste of resources. Wouldn’t this energy be better spent interacting in one place?
Holtz’s comparison was that Facebook was like a large athletic park with a bunch of people playing various sports, whereas niche social networking sites like MyRagan are more like an organized team or league (please correct me if I’ve gotten you wrong here, Shel). What he fails to take into account is that Facebook is indeed the large athletic park, but it also encompasses all of the organized teams and leagues by way of the groups and specialized applications.
Part of the reason that greater interaction might be taking place in a venue such as MyRagan is because it is still the early days. While the social networking graveyard (R.I.P. Friendster) is proof that everyone moves onto something eventually, I feel that MyRagan won’t even make its first birthday. The novelty of the site no doubt intrigues people at this point, that won’t last much longer. As I’ve asked earlier (without answer), how many of those 8,000 members are actually active? Satisfied? Have fulfilling communications experiences with MyRagan?
MyRagan and its members would probably benefit much more from having all of their interaction take place in one solid place, where it becomes easier to recruit members.
Until some sort of token or universal passport system (allowing us to move between various social networks without having to create new ids, logins, etc) is created, it is a waste of time to invest heavily in multiple networks.
That said, I’m not against trying new things. By all means, check out the latest new development. If it is easy enough to use, people will flock to it, and it will replace the old system.
We’re all probably social network sluts, but we also all probably have our ol’ faithful, that one that you just can’t give up. And I’m sure that at the end of the day, the numbers will choose Facebook, or the next universal social networking giant. Niche networks have had their fun.
If you have any success stories from MyRagan (or other niche social networks for that matter), I would like to hear them.
-Parker
Tags: brand loyalty, debate, shel holtz, sluts, social networking, The Times
Hi, Parker. I’m a myragan “slut,” I guess. It’s my only social networking site. Why myragan and not a facebook or myspace group? I’m not allowed to have access to regular social networking sites at work. I can make an argument for myragan, since it’s a site for professional exchange. Besides I’m not interested in keeping an online social life; I’d rather do that in person. But professional relationships do work extremely well over myragan (and other niche social networking sites, I’d assume), especially when exchanging ideas, documents, videos, podcasts with larger groups. - Amy
Parker - I have a Facebook page but I only created it at the request of a family member who wants to share family photos etc. there. I log in infrequently, and have set my privacy options such that everything on my page is viewable ONLY to my Friends (of which I have only three - all people I already knew personally).
I was briefly on MySpace, but found it to be worse than any singles bar I ever went to. The amount of garbage, solicitations and irrelevant crap that I had to wade through to connect with the few people I had any interest in was beyond the pale. I deleted my page after a few months.
MyRagan.com conversely was an exciting, intelligent, useful and fun experience from literally the minute I hit “enter” after creating my page. 99.9% of the people on that site do what I do for a living, so they understand my challenges. However, because members are also diverse (the site is world-wide now) they can, and have given me advice about how they solved a communication problem, or point me to to someone (usually a MyRagan member) who’s an expert on a certain topic. Additionally, the site provides a number of free resources and documents related to the job I do thanks to the Ragan people. Are they also willing to sell their service to you? Sure. But is everything on the site an ad for their products? Not even close! I have in a few short months on MyRagan built up a business focused “group” of smart, funny, supportive people who help make the challenges of doing what we all do for a living a lot more fun and effective. I think you’re wrong about MyRagan not seeing its first birthday. Perhaps not all the members are active daily, but if you had spent any time there you’d know that there are a pretty healthy number of people on there regularly and actively.
Sorry for the long post, but I felt the contrast between these supposedly
Parker, myragan definitely has value. I’ve met some great people on there who are smart, funny, and professional. We share notes on our work experiences, share ideas on new projects we are presented with in our daily jobs and best of all, we understand each other. Many people outside of communications don’t understand what I do and these fabulous people do. When you put a question or theory out there and people from all over the world, in the same profession, share their takes on it, well…it is just wonderful and educational and there is always something new to learn. I test out other social media sites, but in the end, I don’t want to find friends using the “Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon” formula.
I find great value in MyRagan. Of course, I also serve as managing editor of the site, so …
I suggest checking out this reader opinion piece that ran on the New York Times Web site August 9th. The paper wrote a story about architecture in Second Life and asked for reader comments on their use of social networks. There are 128 comments and many of them praise Facebook. At the same time, there seem to be nearly as many people referring to niche networks I never knew existed. Check it out. And if you look real hard, you can find my shameless promotion for MyRagan tucked into those 128 comments.
http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/socializing-online/
I’m a MySpace girl myself, so I don’t have much experience in Facebook, but I think the two are similar enough that I can use that experience to contrast against why I can’t get enough of MyRagan.
I’m a communicator trapped in an IT department in a semi-rural area of Alaska. I’m surrounded by acronym-spewing geeks who have regular needs to communicate with the rest of the company, and that translation task falls to me. When MyRagan appeared, it was like an answer to a prayer I didn’t even know to pray. Now I go daily to this place of refreshment, where we can talk about everything from intranets to PR conundrums, about recalcitrant CEOs and supercilious CIOs, about ethical questions, about … well, about everything that communicators like to talk about. The Ragan staff has done a fabulous job of guiding and stimulating conversations, offering useful resources at no cost, and giving us an opportunity to experience firsthand how social media could be incorporated into a business setting in a way that delights and intrigues the audience–how much more useful could that be for those of us tasked with figuring out just how to make blogs and wikis work at work? There may be lively debate, but there’s always respectfulness and support. I find myself invigorated in a way I haven’t felt for years.
I don’t know why you feel a need to express such dire predictions about this site. If you didn’t find what you need in MyRagan, then it probably isn’t the site for you, that’s for sure. But for those of us who are flourishing within its cyber-confines, share some of our joy! And maybe step back and wait and see. Prepare for a happy surprise.
I DO find value in MyRagan and in the Melcrum Comms Network (although right now the latter site doesn’t like my password and won’t accept a newer password). I am part of Facebook and have met some interesting people there, most of whom are involved in social media and marketing. However, on MyRagan I can talk to people with vast experience in internal comms, which is one of my passions. I like Shel’s analogy of the football stadium. Facebook is that stadium and it’s hard to find my kindred internal-comms spirits there.
My only beef with MyRagan is that I have to remember to go there to check on things. I’m super busy these days, and would much rather have a feed so that I can pull content in. That’s how I access just about all my information sources these days. (If there is such a feed available on MyRagan and Melcrum, I haven’t seen it.)
Parker, my analogy of the football stadium involved IABC, the International Association of Business Communicators. My point: Why join a niche professional association when you can wander around the stadium and find those communicators who inevitably are among the 50,000 people at the game? The reason: The focus on communications.
Frankly, while I do spend more time on Facebook than niche networks, I don’t find the groups to which I belong (some 20 of them) very vibrant or active. There is simply more going on that’s relevant to my profession on MyRagan and Communicator’s Network, just as IABC is more relevant to me than a trip to a mass gathering of people.
The point of the article discussing the promiscuity of social network users is simple: People don’t have a problem with belonging to more than one. Just as I belong to AARP for broad benefits for people over 50 and IABC for communications needs, I don’t see why my social networking eggs need to be in one basket (Facebook).
As I’ve noted several times, I’m not convinced niche social networks will succeed. But I’m not convinced they won’t, either.
I’m not a big networking kind of gal, but myragan has been very helpful to me as a professional resource. For example, my boss is working on a report about Internal Communications for senior management. She wondered where the Int Comms dept reports into in other companies (PR, Marketing, CEO, etc). Instead of spending ages on the web trying to research the matter, I put the question to a myragan forum. I received some good responses, including one from a Ragan staffer who recently conducted an Int Comms survey and could quote me exact percentages from his research. So I was able to retrieve some good information with a minimal amount of time invested in the research.
What I like about myragan in particular and niche social networking sites in general is that they allow me to show a different “face” or side of myself, something I couldn’t do if I was only on one site. I have a myspace site for my band, another for my friends, a facebook profile for my friends, and a myragan page for my colleagues.
In a very real sense I’m different people to each group, and it’d be silly (and bad for my career) to use the same profile for each one. I take it you’re on Facebook for professional reasons only, but you’re in a decisive minority there. Maybe someday Facebook will figure out how to show different sides of ourselves to different groups of people (a personal profile/a professional one) in some kind of intelligent way. I think it’s a major hurdle for a Facebook to solve. But they haven’t yet to my knowledge. Until they do I see social networking going the way of magazine publishing: diversified niches.
Besides, everybody who works for Ragan is a genius.
P.S. I work for Ragan.
I, too, am a new recruit to Facebook. I think MyRagan should set up a group there so devotees can join. In the PR biz any publicity is good publicity (or so they say!) — so perhaps having everyone on MyRagan also join a Facebook group of the same name gets the word out.
Another feature in Facebook is feeds. Blogs and other RSS-fed info from other sites can be posted to either a personal space or to a group and then that feed is fed through the news on each group member or friend’s page. Again, more publicity for MyRagan.
I joined a couple of PR groups (IABC, CPRS) and while they weren’t terribly informative I did find some friends and see notifications about chapter events and news.
MyRagan is a vibrant community with tremendous depth to the structure, something that cannot be duplicated in a social network like Facebook or MySpace.
So MyRagan — set up a Facebook group!
I see the sheep have all flocked to the defense of their shepherd. I find myragan.com filled with the same problem most social networking sites have - everyone wants to talk and no one wants to listen. This is made worse by the constant self-promotion of members of the myragan.com staff. I know - their bat and their ball. But the know-it-alls there don’t know it all as they pretend. But they don’t want to listen much either.
Eventually, people run out of things worthwhile to say, then there is silence. Or in the case of myragan.com, we create a new nuisance such as mindless video feeds to watch to take out minds off the fact that we’ve exhausted our ability to discuss meaningful issues. Does anyone really care about who lowercased their title? Or how whether J&J has the right to sue the Red Cross (duh, of course they do - done with that topic, move on).
Thanks to everyone for their comments.
If nothing else, it has shown me that MyRagan DOES have the ability to create discussion, even if that discussion is (as Robb points out) fairly self-centered.
-Parker
I’m looking forward to seeing the cake get cut at MyRagan’s first-and tenth-birthday party (though I won’t partake as I’m doing the low-carb thing).
I do love Facebook–but facebook works best as a means of connecting me with old friends. MyRagan is about finding new co-conspirators, and serving as a platform for some intense debates about our industry and its positioning for the future. We’re going at eachother about the role of morality in organizational communication. That’s not something that would happen on Facebook.
I find it absolutely fascinating Parker, that you’ve latched on to the one negative comment in with eight positive comments (I am not even counting either Shel or any of the Ragan staffers comments although they’re certainly as entitled to an opinion as anyone else) about MyRagan and used that to validate your initial prediction. But, to paraphrase Robb “your bat, your ball”
The discussions I’ve seen on the MyRagan are consistently related to real daily issues in the life of a communicator in a corporate setting (which I’ve been for nearly 15 years) but I will be sure to check back with your site here at the one year mark to see how this all plays out.
Kristen,
Please see my more recent post here http://blogcampaigning.com/2007/08/14/myragan-1-parker-0/ for an update on my opinion.
I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
-Parker
You got to check this video out I found on Youtube. Its badass.
Let me know what you guys think.
youtube video