As the web has evolved, and we have evolved with it, we have started to see that “one size fits all” doesn’t apply to graphing our personal connections online, and more particularly it does not apply when hosting different types of user behaviors.  This is why we manage and engage with our business connections on Linkedin and not typically on Facebook, to give one example.   Considering that social media is still a very young medium, it is safe to expect that more platforms will emerge hosting different connection types and user behaviors.

In the past several years, the Internet has turned the news and greater media industry on its head – everything from content creation to distribution has completely changed.  This has created problems for both consumers and publishers.  For consumers, discovering and accessing the news that is most valuable to us has become overwhelming.  For publishers, developing a strong community and converting that community into hard dollars has become incredibly difficult.   At Pinyadda, we have designed our platform specifically focusing on the evolved news and media landscape, hosting what we call the “news graph“.

The individual parts of the news graph have existed for a long time (post about this coming soon).  With Pinyadda, we are focused on connecting these critical parts and providing more value to the different entities within the news ecosystem.  We have studied how our behavior as news consumers has changed and have provided simple tools for enabling each individual user to get the information they need from the sites they like, the topics they follow and from interesting people.  For publishers, we have focused on providing an open distribution platform aimed at extending publisher’s reach and exposure through automated distribution and organization.  This framework will provide the foundation to enable publishers to capture more critical data and eventually monetize the distribution of their content.

While we have experienced tremendous growth in the short time our platform has been open, we are still young and focused on making improvement to best serve our community of users and publishers.  Our intention for this post is to start of on-going discourse regarding the evolution of the news graph, which we invite you all to contribute to.  We believe the news graph is a critical component to ensuring that consumers have an effective way to access the best information available for their unique interests and needs, as well as enabling publishers to capitalize on providing quality content.

Coming soon: The Working Parts of the News Graph

John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, once stated that, “Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.” After Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments about the death of privacy, one has to wonder whether Barlow’s statement may be more relevant to the times if phrased: “Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking Facebook to respect the private information of its users.”

While there are plenty of smart people arguing the pros and cons of the effects of Facebook’s new privacy changes and Google Buzz’s auto-following model on users’ private information online, I am more interested in the business implications of these developments.  The industry powers like Facebook and Google seem to be in a mad dash to make more information public; however, I wonder if this push for extended network connectivity is smart for all networks.

A recent study conducted by Nielsen found that Twitter’s “heavy users” in the UK consist of 7% of the user population and make up 79% of the total amount of time spent on the site.  Facebook on the other hand sees in the UK 52% of its population as “heavy users” making up 98% of the time spent on site.  While this distinction between the distributions of user activity on the two sites could be attributed to a number of things (e.g. type of content hosted, product differences, etc.), I personally believe that the network designs with regards to privacy and the nature of users information have the largest effect on the user activity distributions.

When analyzing the value of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, much of the excitement comes from data that shows digital word-of-mouth as the most trusted marketing form.  Taking this into consideration, you would think that Facebook and Twitter would want to be very deliberate in making adjustments to privacy settings and product design that effects how information is shared throughout their networks, with a focus on optimizing the distribution of user activity in a way that would best support their business models.

The two networks are typically used for very different things – I think of Facebook as my “social life identity” and Twitter as my “broadcast identity“.  Inevitably, Twitter is a much more public platform than Facebook which would suggest the distribution of user activity will always be a bit more skewed. However, I think it is safe to assume those over at Twitter are probably thinking of ways to engage a larger portion of their user base.  From Facebook’s standpoint, I find the sneaky move to make user’s information more public by default is certainly questionable in terms of user trust, but also strange from a business standpoint.  Facebook’s biggest strength is how deeply people engage with on another on the site, by making such a change I feel they could be jeopardizing this.

I am interested to hear what others thing about this – do you think it is smart for Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz all to be pushing consumers to share more information publicly?  Do you think it is smart for one and not the others?  Let me know in the comments.

I am also interested in hearing from any of you statistical nerds about what you think ideal user activity distributions would look like for the different networks.  I’ll write a follow up post with my opinions on this if there is any activity around the idea.

Misiek spoke at a “fireside chat” at Vilna Shul (a true hidden gem in Beacon Hill with a phenomenal history of Jewish culture in Boston). An HBS strategy professor who teaches “Competing with Social Networks”), Misiek has done extensive research and written numerous case studies on these networks. If you haven’t read his work or seen his data analyses in the news, you’re really missing out. Schooled in sociology, he offers a unique, non-marketer perspective of social networking—way deeper than it as a channel—that strikes the core of why we as humans are engaging so fervently on these platforms. This includes, among others, needs to stay connected with the people we care about and needs to look for new job opportunities.

After he opened the floor for questions, someone asked if he thought there were still needs (opportunities) for new social networks. He offered two examples: one for “girls only” and one for enterprise/corporate environments. The latter struck the biggest chord with me. Having previously worked in consulting I have heard first-hand HR heads express that they realize the power of social media and want to use it internally to cultivate corporate culture and community. However, they know employees aren’t going to discuss at work how hard they’re going to party on Friday night.

As a result, companies have created Twitter handles, perhaps allow their employees to blog, add knowledge to wikis, create a fan page on Facebook, etc. Misiek remarked that what’s missing, and why these don’t actually drive engagement and community within companies, is that the initiatives aren’t adding direct, true value to the employee’s day-to-day responsibilities. More important, they’re not addressing a need in these employees’ life. On the flip side, they are also not effectively adding measurable value to the larger company’s mission or competitiveness. They’re basically just allowing the company to say, “See, we’re totally on the social band wagon.”

Enter the discussions around content we’ve seen really take off this week on Pinyadda after opening up in public beta. We’re truly seeing community amass around content: ideas being exchanged and built upon and experiences and perspective being shared. It’s reinforced my hypothesis about the value Pinyadda could offer in the workplace. Pinyadda might not only be a place to have your industry news served to you. Nor might it only be a place to discover and discuss breaking news or useful blog posts that can help your business learn to be better. Pinyadda can enable employees to see, for example, what their boss or CEO is reading and allows them to add their own thoughts, experiences, and ideas about the item in real-time.

From the employee’s perspective, imagine, now you’re no longer employee #2384 in the cube by the bathroom in the Minneapolis office. You have an identity and are sharing your ideas and knowledge cross-departmentally and with other employees and senior managers, perhaps who don’t know you. That’s fulfilling a direct need for both the individual (hey, I’m really valuable and have lots to offer to this firm) AND the company (what are our competitors doing, how can we do things differently, here’s a new idea and fresh perspective, employee #2384 is an up-and-coming leader).

At a more basic level, how many links do you receive a day to “check this out” from your boss or buddy in the cube over? Maybe it’s something about work. Maybe a YouTube clip from last night’s Tonight Show. Mostly useless threads of emails follow, cluttering what used to be a communication medium to talk about projects with co-workers and do business with partners and prospective clients. As our product lead Austin often says, I think we’ve advanced enough to separate these link chains from work inboxes with all the different media platforms now available to us. Assuming the link is work-related, the fact remains that these discussions aren’t opened up to the larger company to discuss–the collective intelligence opportunity. Perhaps a different business unit in an office in another country would have an interesting perspective on the item and offer insights that can help the other unit operate more efficiently or consider a new idea.

Bottom line: I think Misiek is absolutely right. There is a gaping opportunity for social products in the workplace. His sociological need perspective explains why most current internal corporate social initiatives aren’t doing so hot. As he noted, successful ones down the road will add value to and address a social need for both employees AND the company’s competitiveness at large. A platform like Pinyadda that can enable companies and employees to reap the benefits of collective intelligence could be an effective solution.

Pinyadda is too early stage at this point to address these needs with a custom product. However, if you are a small working group or business and think you could benefit from using the platform today, please do reach out to us. We’d love to work with you (cheryl[at]pinyadda.com or @cheryllmorris).

Regardless, we’re incredibly jazzed to be seeing some smart, valuable dialogues take place on Pinyadda this week and hope to see more as our early adopter base grows.