back

Future of social networking is fewer friends

View Comments View Comments Check out this blog article #neoco #crmtweet this

Posted By Benn

During my working day (and beyond), I get a lot of people asking me “what is the next big thing in Social Media/ Networking?”. One trend that seems to be developing right now is the process of ‘narrowcasting‘. Narrowcasting is exactly what is sounds like, the idea of reaching a narrower group of people. Social media has done broadcasting. Everyone on Facebook has more ‘friends’ than they have ‘actual’ friends or LinkedIn connections than are really tried and trusted business contacts. There was that mad rush or as we call it the ‘Pokemon‘ phase (Pokemon tagline is “Gotta catch em all!” and set players the challenge of collecting all Pokemon).

Pokemon times are over for emerged social media users

Pokemon times are over for emerged social media users

Narrowcasting in social media is nothing new, from a theory perspective it follows the lifecycle of ‘real life’ friends as you gain friends through your younger more energetic years and then refine these relationships to only maintain the meaningful or typically most convenient. Burger King ran a great campaign a while ago encouraging people to trim their Facebook friends for food rewards.

One of the recent tools to enable narrowcasting in an interesting way is LoKast. LoKast is a disposable, location specific social network. In a nutshell, anyone can create a Lokast network (at a club, party, conference, etc) and allow other people to join. People can then share anything from contact info to music and video files, chat or more.

LoKast social network creator

LoKast social network creator

It’s still a little buggy (at time of writing this) but it’s a nice idea and something I’ve done a few times with friends for good effect. This is a good way to create narrowcast networks that are 100% relevant to what you are doing right now and only reaching the people who immediately count. There is always the option to push this content further – in a broadcast way – to make the most of content created or to encourage people to join your narrowcast.

The other attraction has to be the ‘disposable’ nature of the network. This is a boon regarding privacy and security fears but also ties in with the fast moving nature of some social groups. This also works well with marketing promotions: We run a limited audience music gig and share audio and video with the fans who attend. in a much easier way than any other method for immediate delivery at the gig. They are also more likely to push this on to their networks as it is ‘live’ with them right away.

Is narrowcasting the future of social networking? Most definitely not. But it is definitely a part of the future of social media and social networking.

Tags  

  • http://www.neoco.com/alex Alex Kilgour

    This is definately the future for me. Never been a fan of “collecting” friends for the sake of it, and like to keep my facebook friends to a managable number of people that I “actually” know. It helps from a security aspect as well, if you have 2000 friends, half of whom you don’t really know, then you have know idea what kind of people are viewing your online life.

  • http://www.facebook.com/benn.achilleas Benn Achilleas

    Thanks Alex, I agree but one of the issues with Facebook is the potential to offend through refusing a request. Whilst I only accept requests from people I know it still makes a friend list that is more than manageable. It does however make it a great contact book, which is pretty much the main way I use Facebook now (that and catching up on friends pics). Ironically, I’ve done about 10x more business through Facebook than LinkedIn – which is supposed to be for business only.

  • http://www.neoco.com Nigel

    Somehow I’ve managed to rack up over 1000 ‘friends’ on Facebook. In my defense, I have personally met all of them! I’ve tried to stop confirming friend requests, but I agree that it could be considered rude to the friend ‘Adder’. I do lots of business on Facebook and use it to message contacts when the server goes down. So for me I guess the more the merrier.

  • http://Website Michelle

    People need to be told this through an app? reward system? I can’t even read this. This is so ridiculous too me. Come on! People need to get off their phones, get away from behind the computer and go back to making more meaningful connections. What happened to the art of face to face connections.

  • http://www.neoco.com/benn Benn

    Thanks for the comment Michelle. I think everyone would agree that face to face is always best but people can still be social in a virtual space and have significant connections. That might be one of the points you are missing regarding this app and how it can be used to enable face to face/ physical connections. Imagine that you are in a nightclub or at a conference, you know very few people at the venue and might feel quite isolated. Narrowcast networks would enable you to quickly identify and find the people in the venue who have the same interests as you, making it more likely your face to face connection goes well because you have an established connection. There is also nothing to stop you going for the old ‘work the room’ approach it’s just that does not work for all people and some people want more ‘efficiency’ from their time.

  • http://Website lexy

    I remember back in the days when I was in school: we would compare who had the most contacts on their mobile phones (as mobile phones were spanking new, especially to kids and the wider market), then at Uni it seemed that the coolest people were those with 800+ friends on Facebook… Now, the uber cool people take pride in only having some 50-100 ‘true’ friends in both address book and Facebook friend list. Who knows, perhaps the next things will be for the ultra cool people to just vanish and never be heard of again?

blog comments powered by Disqus