Up Close and Personal: Social Networking from the Service Creators Viewpoint

Amongst the creators of several social networking sites, the consensus was that successful social networking is all about everyday people and everyday uses. The founders and creators of sites such as Twitter, Dopplr, Plazes, Jaiku and Hyves discussed their experiences and how their services are being used. The power of social networking: Felix Petersen, Founder and CEO of Plazes, a location-focused social network, spoke of posting his location in a fancy restaurant in Cannes on Plazes. Four minutes later, he received a SMS suggesting which dish to order. Biz Stone spoke about how Twitter is being used for social activism. An Egyptian activist uses the service to keep his followers updated on his whereabouts and has used it to prevent the jailing of a fellow dissident. (He sent followers to a house where dissident was about to be arrested, thwarting the police.) Raymond Spanjar, from the Dutch site, Hyves, spoke about his company’s strategy to focus on the Dutch market, refining the site and launching new services to develop its social networking capabilities. Matt Biddulph, Founder of Dopplr, was tossed a hard-ball comment about the ethics of his site promoting air travel (thereby pollution). He rose to the occasion, pointing out that Dopplr can be used to promote travel efficiency (planning more meetings with people who are in the same place as you). When asked in which direction social networking sites are evolving, Jyri Engstrom from Jaiku spoke about social networking via mobile devices which promotes location-specific info (eg. restaurant suggestion in specific city) as well as a refined filtering process which will only deliver information to users which is relevant.