This is a part of the ongoing series of blog posts detailing how one should think about social features, and adding them to your product. Earlier, we discussed the social follow/friendship models, and where each one is applicable.

The models are not only interesting from a theoretical perspective, but also have deeper implications on the kind of network affiliations and bindings they enable. Depending on the kind of model the product designer decides to follow, creates either broader networks, or tighter ones.

For the purposes of this post, we will examine the difference between a broad social network and a vertical one. It is common to hear lots of companies and products say that they are creating a vertical social network. What do they really mean? Let’s first look at what a broad social network is, and then see where the verticals lie.

From wikipedia,

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called “nodes”, which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

Essentially, a social network consists of people connected to each other. Right? Well, yes and no. The definition is true, but it is not precise. People connected to other people because of social connections is one thing, but people connected to other people because of their own relationship to some content that both value is totally another. In that sense, Facebook started off as a true social network, while Twitter started off as an interest network.

These days, a typical social network starts by having users define their relationship first with content, and then have ‘better’ relationships with other people based upon the collection of content that might be interesting to both parties. When the field of content and the relationships one can have with this field is broad, we get a broad social network. However, restricting this field creates a vertical social network. Thus, vertical networks are, by definition, a subset of the possibilities of connections between not only people, but also between people and content.

So, why do people build vertical networks, when the field is limited? It’s kind of like the niche idea. By focusing on a specific area, products hope to achieve 2 primary goals:
1. more structured information about the field of content in question, and
2. better and more meaningful relationships between people based upon the exploitation of this structure in the content.

Since broad networks have mechanisms in place to interact with all kinds of content, they cannot add structured information about any specific area of content. For example, Facebook cannot allow us to interact with Restaurants in a restaurant-specific way, but must leave it open to accept a restaurant as just a place (categories do come in play, but only a little bit). This hole left by the dominant networks beckons to entrepreneurs with specific needs, and they try to create the vertical networks with structured information.

Note that we have only talked about the type of social networks in this post. Some people think that Twitter has defined the interest network, but I think they are not quite correct. It’s true that we follow some other people based upon our interest in the subject of what they are writing, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that twitter is also used more as a propaganda mechanism by marketers, and as a means of keeping in touch by other people. In either case, it doesn’t really satisfy the criteria of being an interest network.

If we were to define the relationship of a person with content to find out about their interest, then Google probably has the richest information available in the form of search. Of course, privacy concerns and laws prohibit them from leveraging that advantage fully for networks like Google+ (for example, G+ could suggest me people to follow based upon my recent searches. How useful that would be is anybody’s guess).

In the next post, we will look at the specifics of what it means to create a vertical social network and the challenges faced in doing so.

Cheers!

There has been a lot written about the kind of ‘social’ graphs prevelant on the internet. I am not adding any great new information, and readers are advised to check out the following posts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_graph

http://cdixon.org/2010/07/22/graphs/

Here, however, I am including this discussion mostly for completion sake. But, I also think that the discussion is valuable to point out the key differences between the kind of social models, as well as understand the history behind their evolution.

The two main types of social models under consideration are:
1. Friendship (the non-directional graph)
2. Follower (directional graph)

The original social model of friendship started primarily with sites like friendster. However, it wasn’t until the advent of MySpace that it really took hold. Facebook, of course, took it to a whole new level. The model primarily involved a handshake element. i.e. if I have to become your friend, you must also be my friend. Although this was geared more towards privacy, it meant that the field was automatically somewhat limited and constrained by the intersection of the interests of the two people involved. If only one of them was interested in knowing about the other, the model wouldn’t work. For example, I am interested in being a friend of Obama, but I don’t think he cares (at least not at present). Thus, this kind of model results in a true ‘social’ graph. If I am not socially connected to another person, this graph will not take hold.

The follower model got rid of this barrier by allowing anyone to follow anyone else. Now, I can follow Obama, and he doesn’t have to follow me. This way, his ‘inbox’ is not cluttered by my updates. It is arguable that twitter’s main innovation has been the creation of the follower model and the subsequent choices with regards to privacy in keeping those updates public, by default.

The upshot of the follower model is that it ends up creating not a truly social graph, but more of an interest graph. Now I can follow people based on my interests, and I don’t have to know them socially. The beauty of this method is that I am now in control of my interests, and am free to follow anyone who is speaking about things that might satisfy my interests.

The follower model has taken hold in all verticals where new products are emerging to let people share their opinions about any topic, and for other people to follow these opinions. In each case, the person who is following can make the decisions to un-follow the person, or follow new people. This provides a great sense of control to the user, and lightens the burden of application developers to suggest better more interesting content. Because users can now simply follow other users to discover new content, application developers can concentrate on developing tools to allow discovery of people to follow, and not necessarily content.

However, the friendship model is still relevant in cases where we care less about interest, and more about social engagement driven by already established norms. For example, LinkedIn still follows this model, and it makes sense for their product. I must know the other person in order to be connected on LinkedIn so that I can then use that connection to find better opportunities later, find good candidates, etc. Also, once the friendship model takes hold, it’s much more difficult to break since noone wants to break those social connections when they are backed by real-world connections. So, this network becomes much more powerful, and can only grow.

So, both models have their place, but it depends on the product how best to use the models. I have seen hybrid models where you can follow users, but can form stronger bindings based on friendships. Facebook seems to be moving to this system as well with the recent addition of their “Subscribe” functionality, where a user can subscribe to another user’s public updates (twitter or Google+ anyone?).

What do you guys think?