January 21, 2008 · 09:09 AM

Getting Social

Social Communities enjoy a constantly growing popularity. People begin to link with each other regardless of their origins and ancestry. Some shared interests are often sufficient to build the base of strong networks. How will these communities change in the future? What impact will they have on the "first life" and which risks do they hold?

Speakers:

• Matt Cohler is vice president of Facebook, one of the biggest social communities in the internet. Last year Microsoft bought 1,6 % of Facebook for 240 million US-Dollar.
• Reid Hoffman is CEO of the business-oriented networking community Linkedin which as of December 2007 had 17 million users.
• Andrej Nabergoj from Slovenia is CEO of NEO (New Europe Online), a platform used mainly by users from Middle and Eastern Europe. It's rapidly growing.
• Joanna Shields is president of Bebo, the world's biggest social media network. Before, she worked for Google in Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Africa.
• Lars Hinrichs is chair of the executive board, CEO and founder of business network Xing.
• Sean Parker co-founded Napster in 1999. Afterwards he co-founded Plaxo, an online contact service, and was founding president of Facebook. Today he is managing partner of Founders Fund, a venture capital fund based out of San Francisco.
• Marc Samwer will moderate the talk. With his Europeans Founders Fund he invests in startup businesses. He was one of the founders of Jamba! and the internet auction site alando.de, which was bought by ebay. Recently he got involved in Facebook as well.

Opening remarks by one of the sponsors, 3C group, which aims at making the conference climate neutral. They have calculated that the conference has an output of 1566 CO2. Through support for a sugar plantage in India the conference apparently becomes climate neutral.

Chair Marc Samwer welcomes the panel members.
Each panelist has one minute of time to update the audience on what happened in their company.

Joanna Shields: Reads a script (a little more quickly since it was designed for two minutes). "Social networking marks a change in how people are interacting with each other, growing more quickly than anything before. A culture phenomenon is on the way. Power shift in the internet: Who is going to control the future? Media entertainment as a way of self-expression.
People spend 40 minutes a day on Bebo, the world's third-largest network, doubled from 20 million to 40 million users. Novelties: First internet drama show since August 2007. Bebo does not control the communication; it is only providing the tools to share content and "design your own unique life experience". Moderate applause.

Matt Cohler: Talks about the success story of facebook, which today has over 60 million users. In September 2006 it had 10 million, back then 93% in the US, mostly students. Today only 37% of the users live in the US, now people of all ages are using facebook, Europe is only 1/3 of facebook, mostly concentrated in the U.K. Facebook will be translated into other European languages, though, to foster the development.

Andrej Nabergoj: "Social networking is just about to start!" But he sees an increased complexity for users, it will be more and more difficult to find interesting content. His network NEO is growing rapidly, after two years of preparation in February they will release noovo.com, a social content search machine.

Lars Hinrichs: "Business last year has been very exciting. Xing had 25,000 paying customers last year, and it still has a very strong growth potential. He aims also at more advertising, still learning what to do and what not to do. Facts and figures: High growth rates of revenue and membership, share price increased by 47%. Xing is looking forward to 2008, will take over more social networks.

Reid Hoffman: Linkedin today has over 18 million members worldwide, last year they introduced an intelligent applications platform, founded a hedge fund... 2008 they will focus on integrating news into the network among others.

Sean Parker: The story of facebook is the story of personal representation on the internet. It goes back to the first days of the internet, people communicating with each other who didn't necessarily know each other. Today people are using their real identities. He tries to work out more applications for facebook in the next year.

Marc: Why should I join your network?

Matt: "Facebook is at the core. Universally appealing, reflected in the growth of facebook in all parts of the world, of all ages."

Reid: "To stay in touch with professionals, stay informed and on top of the market in order to make it professional."

Joanna: She points out that social networking is not a game, there won't be one clear winner. People will belong to more than one network: professional, media, culture. Bebo takes the foundation of social networking, is about popular culture, where people talk to their friends and favourite musicians, it becomes personal with more than one million skins. She herself is also member of facebook.

Lars: "People look for information with jobs and business related. People want to stay in contact not only for one act but for longer."

Andrej: Points out that email is one of the most important content holders. He tries to merge content and personal information. So content is always in contact with a person.

Sean - "As an independent", as the chair points out: He says he is highly biased. Online represents the social community of the people offline. Only one network will be used in every country, people will tend to one of the three or four big networks. In the future it will not be about how many people the networks will have, but about applications that couldn't otherwise exist.

Marc: What are the future plans of facebook? Will other plattforms be opening?

Matt: "2007 focused on first full version of platform opened to application. People are given the opportunity of making money. There were 100,000 helpers who wrote applications on the platform." He compares to spreadsheets in HTML, which is used today everywhere but was revolutionary when it was invented. He will work on the rationalization of the site and hopes that users will build applications that are interesting for everybody, he points to applications that not only aim at a country, but at a region like Bavaria or a city like Munich - a company has not the power to do that, but with enabling applications people can do that themselves.

Joanna: Bebo will be the first company to launch an API open to facebook applications. Announced open platform for media companies: Media can bring their own advertisers, their own content. All the major media companies taking part in that.

Lars: "Open applicatons are one of the key things, looking for partners in the past year. Open character brings best applications, looks for synchronization of mobile phones, calendars etc."

Marc: Plans with noovo?

Andrej: "We are not a social network but a social engine. Starting globally on .com-domain, but focusing on Eastern Europe and some Asian countries. Eastern Europe: 300 million people, tremendous opportunities, most countries are on the edge, developments are very interesting. They don't remember dial-up because they started with broadband."

Marc: Afraid of facebook, linkedin?

Joanna: "No, not afraid. We got the preposition right, partnerships with media companies and advertisers, relevat experience for users, focusing on culture and popular content: music, books, art, stuff that matters to people. Building satellite sites in the countries, not one big network. Looking for relevant content before they are launched."

Lars: "The speed of development has increased rapidly, concentration on certain key countries. All markets are local. In Europe 27 different ways of communicating, need to address things differently."

Reid: "We are not focused on replacing communication. Linkedin has its own market, it can exist with facebook. We are not afraid of xing, even if we not exist in german, we still have growth rates through personal commuities."

Marc: Afraid of myspace?

Matt: "There seems to be a lot of fear around... (laughs). Facebook is different from everything else, it has a unique position. People share content with their real friends, with their real identities, so they can decide what information they share with whom, it's a better approach and more efficient for the people. Language is an important part of people sharing information with each other, we can do this all ourselves or turn it to the world like with the application platform - will do the latter, employing professional translators, but follow what the users want and do. Translation application will be like any other application on facebook, initial data launched in French, German an Spanish. This also proves how fundamental facebook is to the users: They invest their time to help improve the product and translate!"

Marc: "The most important question": How to monetize networks?

Reid: "Social networks and professional networks are different. Advertizing..."

Lars: "Xing took something back in advertising that the users didn't like. Members use Xing where they can actually gain monetary interest. Job ads are paid for by clicks, not in general. If our members benefit, we will benefit too as a company."

Joanna: "Last week WPP announced that in UK internet advertising will exceed TV advertising. Bebo has tight demographic, in UK if you got something to say to the younger generation, there's no better place to do it than on Bebo. We also innovated some new advertising models on Bebo. Brands participating in Tate modern in storyline thing."

Matt: "There are different channels of advertising on facebook: cooperation with Microsoft for smaller businesses, bigger brands directly. Advertising can be powerful if it adds to the user experience: they would rather have the ad than not have the ad. Think about the ad content also."

Question from the audience: "Is Yahoo right now building up a social network?"

Sean: "Different social networks serve different prepositions, they co-exist. Don't underestimate network effects: if one person joins, it adds more than one to the network. If you get off facebook, you will have to ask 600 friends to come with you. It's about the active connections of the users on a day-to-day basis: In Facebook, 50% of the users come back every day."

Question from a FAZ media journalist: "Will facebook buy StudiVZ?"

Matt: Facebook is focused on launching translation tools and localize the platform, create applications that are locally relevant in lots of cultures, but does not say no."

 

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