Today, we can distinguish a number of trends in the development of social networks in the world and on the Internet.
The development of niche social networks
The level of development of networks has almost reached its peak, and at the moment we can almost every day see the birth of new social networks. Recently, these are precisely niche projects: for millionaires and top managers, for dog lovers, for the disabled or for the memory of loved ones who have left this world. This is a normal trend, which was caused by the saturation of the market with common networks “for all.” Most of the niche social networks are unique in their own way, they will find loyal users and take their place in the market. In the case of Social Media this is important.
Existing networks
The market for social networks is saturated, and as a result, competition between them is increasing. As in any business, one of the key techniques of competition is innovation. In our case, these innovations are manifested in the birth of new functions of social networks, and more and more often these functions are realized by users themselves because social networks open the API, Application Programming Interface (application programming interface, which makes it possible to develop applications that work with these networks) for developers.
- A separate point is to highlight the personalization of social networks, i.e. their customization for a specific user when people go to social networks and see only what they want, information is offered according to their interests, which were determined earlier, their friends are in one click, etc.
Social networks in business
Social networks have long captured the minds of ordinary Internet users, and now it’s the turn of business. Discussions about the use of this tool in business have been ongoing for a long time, but they were not in a hurry to introduce such innovations. Technology has been improved, and this inevitably led to the appearance of the first successful examples.
- One of the first serious and interesting tricks was the introduction of social networks into the business strategy of the American company Cisco Systems, Inc, a leader in network technologies for the Internet.
Specialists of this company work in different countries of the world, which, naturally, caused communication difficulties. To transmit very important information, the company employees had to convene two-day conferences with the necessary specialists from different countries, which was very inconvenient and, most importantly, required significant financial resources. As a result, within the framework of the Cisco 3.0 initiative, a solution to the problem appeared – an internal corporate social network, which contained all the necessary information and laid various ways of communication within the company, which was especially convenient for employees from different countries. This social network has internal corporate blogs, training materials, video communications, encyclopedias and other elements of social networks. In 2007, the Cisco Communications Center of Excellence (CCoE) was opened at Cisco to help company employees use this social network and all its benefits.
Other Aspects
In addition to solving the problem of communication, a social network can become an effective tool to strengthen corporate culture, naturally stimulating the process of team building and team building. Do not forget about another application of social networks in business this is obtaining information about consumers, competitors, employees, job seekers and much more.