Pluck SiteLife is a hosted social networking application which resides entirely within your website via javascript or API calls. This interesting combination keeps social network members on your website (for brand and traffic) and integrates seemlessly with the rest of your content, allowing use of your own ad servers and analytics programs.

Architectural Record (from McGraw-Hill) is an excellent example of how invisible the lines can be between your website content and the social network - sometimes even overlapping. The out-of-the-box javascript implementation has the downside of the social network content being invisible to search engines for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. Most content in a social network may not be important for SEO but it is something to keep in mind depending on your industry and audience. Important content can be implemented using their APIs to display the content in your site’s HTML, which will be visible to search engines.

SiteLife’s customers include McGraw-Hill, News Corp., Reuters Media, Circuit City, and the Washington Post (customer list). SiteLife Platform is the basic package with functionality added through Reactions, Videos, Photos, Blogs, Forums and Personas (visit links for examples of implementation):

• Platform: Community management, reporting, abuse management, branded experience, single sign-on, shared services, hosting and management.
• Reactions: Comments, recommendations, reviews, ratings, and article submissions.
• Videos: Flash video with conversion, sharing, public video galleries, ratings, recommendations, comments, email this video, integrated discovery tools, moderation, brand control, and integration with advertising programs.
• Photos: Galleries for general or specific topics, managed photo queue, upload options, mobile posting, tagging, titles, descriptions, automatic scanning and resizing, recommendations, ratings, comments, and email to a friend.
• Blogs: Rapid startup, moderation, author tools, integrated photos, content control, and multi-author blogging.
• Forums: Author tools, moderation, search, discovery, migration from other forums, groups, and user signatures.
• Personas: Personal landing page, user profile, friends, messages and custom templates.

Pricing includes an initial setup fee and then a monthly service fee which depends on how many page views and modules you have. The average setup fee for large websites (like Washington Post) is $50k-$100k and then a monthly service fee in the low thousands.

Technorati Tags: social networks, B2B social networks, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting

Small World Labs offers a PHP hosted social network application with custom look & feel and full control over the functionality. Clients include Oracle, American Cancer Society, CMP, Save the Children, Special Olympics (client list). There are three different price points with different functionality and options. Available functions include: profiles, audio, video, polling, tagging, forum, jobs, classifieds, wikis, surveys, audio/video broadcast, podcasts, ratings, reviews and more (full feature list).

This is true social networking software, not just community features with social network built in, where your profile is tied to all the content you view, rate, comment on and share. There is an in depth member search function to allow members to connect with others with similar interests. Content within the social network can be displayed on your website or you can take content from your website and display it within the network. The network can integrate with external ad servers - different levels of the software allow different amount of advertising placements and you can target ads to particular groups, features, etc. Small Labs uses Google Analytics for statistics but can also integrate with any tag-based analytics program.

Features of interest:

• Email is sent internally within the community so visitors do not need to reveal their contact information unless they want to.
• Events can be created for online or offline events with both public and personal calendars.
• Groups also have their own calendar and can be public, open, closed or hidden. These are communities within a community and allow smaller niches to form within your network. Groups can have their own main page, photos, blogs, forum, members, files, etc.
• Security options can be set throughout the community. There is automatic and customizable filtering for profanity and social network members can report objectionable materials. To help with moderation, members can be appointed to police certain portions of the network with customizable amount of control.
• Photos, Audio and Video can be uploaded which can be rated and commented upon by members. This content can be displayed throughout the community or your website as Most Recent, Most Rated, Most Viewed, Top Rated, Most Commented to drive more traffic to this portion of the network. Any video that is uploaded is transcoded and turned into flash when it is uploaded to decrease the amount of bandwidth used.

Pricing depends for annual fees include license, hosting and development: Platform starts at $20k, Professional at $40k, and Enterprise at $60k with included monthly bandwidth levels of 1 million, 2 million and 3 million page views respectively. The networks can have as many members you want and platforms and modules can be switched at any time. To pay for all this, any ad, ecommerce, access revenue is completely yours.

Technorati Tags: social networks, B2B social networks, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting

Yesterday I took a look at Prospero, which is really more of a community vendor with social networking thrown in as an add-on. They run the community engines for some fairly large sites: Marthastewart.com, Business Week, iVillage, Monster (full client list). They have been in the business on the Internet since 1992, first as an ISP, then moving to developing interactive applications, which is where communities fit in.

Prospero is excellent at seamless integration, allowing community and website content to intermingle on any website. They focus mostly on community with boards, chats, reviews, article comments, and polls. Social networking is an add-on, which allows “advanced profiles”, but does not provide a true tool for finding and connecting with peers. If you want a hands-off approach, Prospero will build and integrate whatever components you want with even seeding and moderation services available.

Their pricing is based on the modules you use with additional monthly charges for operations and usage. For the basic engine, messaging and social networking, I was given list price ballparks of $9k/month for licensing, $2k/month for operations, and $500/month for approximately 500,000 monthly page requests for a grand total of $11,500/month. With volume discounts, the price would probably be closer to $7800/month. There is also an initial cost for professional services to design, build and integrate your community (they said these costs are almost always lower than $30k and often closer to $10k) with a 4-8 week startup time.

These costs clearly put Prospero out of the range of small and medium B2B businesses and just about anyone else who does not have a clear understanding of the ROI and revenue streams. They also use ASP and .NET coding on their side, which just rubs me the wrong way (I have seen very few web applications done well in these “languages”).

Technorati Tags: social networks, B2B social networks, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting

I had a demo today with a social network vendor: Leverage Software. They offer SAAS (software as a service) hosting to provide community and social networking software for some fairly large websites: InfoWorld, Saleforce.com, Reuters, The New York Times, to name just a few. Most of their features are fairly standard: profiles, blogs, forums, polling, chats, file uploads (photo, video, etc.). An open API provides widgets to integrate network content onto your website, web services or cookies for single sign-on, and integration with analytics and ad serving programs. Visual Targeted Matchmaking is a unique visual representation of the network and relationships, allowing datamining and filtering for specific niches.

Technically, the platform is written on .NET, which doesn’t thrill me, but the application seemed well designed and quick. Of more concern is the cost. The $299/month pricetag touted on their homepage is only for the smallest network of 100 users and does not include the upfront startup fee of $7450/network. Pricing for just 5000 users jumps to around $2400/month. These costs quite easily push them beyond most B2B websites. If you’re just venturing into social networking, have a small website, or are unsure of the ROI, I’d recommend trying a free service such as Ning to start with - look to upgrade if the community works out.

I’ll be continuing my evaluation of social networking companies with Community Server, Prospero, Small World Labs, and Pluck.

Technorati Tags: social networks, B2B social networks, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting

Interested in what’s going on in the Internet Industry or Online Advertising? Here are some great sites to take a look at:

• MediaPost Publications: This covers just about everything that’s going on in media and advertising (both online and other channels).
• John Battelle’s Searchblog: On the intersection of search, search advertising, media, technology.
• Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB): News, research, specifications, standards and guidelines on online and interactive advertising.
• Advertising Age: Everything advertising - all channels and media.
• ClickZ: Internet marketing solutions for marketing. Want to know the marketing side of online advertising? This is the place.
• Adverlicio.us: An archive of online advertising. Great place to get ideas and examples by industry.
• Online Publishers Association: Standards, guidelines, research and news for online content producers.

Technorati Tags: internet advertising, internet news, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting

An important part of social networking is being able to share and comment on articles and other content with your peers. Usually this is done by adding a link for an article or other content to one of the social networking sites such as Digg, Newsvine, Del.icio.us, etc. As a content producer, you want to make it as easy as possible for your readers to send your content to these social networks. One way is to add links to various social networks with every post you write (either manually or programmatically).

I’ve been investigating ways to do this automatically and have come across a service called Add This! which gives you a button that has many social networking sites already included. It has support for many popular blogging platforms such as TypePad and WordPress, and it will work with other platforms by giving you the code to insert. It also has stats on how readers are using it so you can see which social networks they are submitting your content to. There also is a customizable version which allows you to select which networks appear and have your own logo at the top. I’ve just added it to this blog, and I’ll report on how well it is working soon.

Technorati Tags: social networks, B2B social networks, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting

I’ve been taking a look at social networking sites for the B2B industry. I rediscovered Ning today. When they were first launched they were a free-only service that was geared towards only the consumer Internet audience. Now they’ve added a paid service to remove or run your own ads, increase bandwidth and storage space, and use your own domain name.

As a network administrator, you have full control of exactly how your network looks and acts - ability for blogs, rss feeds, video, audio, photos, forums, and outside plugins. You have ownership of the content on your network, with the ability to backup any code and content within it. Ning does not currently interface with outside registration services (would love to see them support OpenID), but you can import and export your registered users. There’s also the option to create a closed network so that only the people invited can get in.

In just 5 minutes I was able to create a B2B social network that I’ll eventually tweak and link up to this site. If it grows, I can change to the paid options at any time. If you’re looking for a social networking tool for your B2B Website, take a look at Ning. It may be an easy, good and cheap way to add social networking to your site.

Technorati Tags: social networks, B2B social networks, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms will tell you that you need to have keyword-optimized pages on your website in order to appear in Google’s search results for those keywords. Customer-centric design requires that your website be designed with your customer foremost in-mind. Can these co-exist? Can you have the best of both worlds?

Yes and no. Search engines put a good deal of weight on how often content is updated on the site and for each of the keywords in question. Keeping keyword-optimized pages updated can be (and usually is) a full-time job. Have you ever been on a keywords-optimized site as a customer who is trying to find something? Often it is difficult to wade through all the content written only for the search engines.

Customer-centric design means keeping your customer in mind. What are your customers looking for when they come to your website? Do most of your customers come from search engines? If so, taking a SEO keyword-optimized approach may make sense.  Or do you use other advertising methods such as web ads, print ads, word-of-mouth, blogging, conference appearances and speaking engagements? In these cases, it may make more sense to create landing pages for each of these audiences instead.

How do you get the best of both SEO and Customer-Centric Design? Create customer-centric pages optimized for what your customers are looking for and how they came to your site. Take SEO keyword optimization into account when you design those pages and your overall website. Both your customers and your wallet will thank you and, if done properly, this approach will lead to better search engine ranking for the long term.

Technorati Tags: customer-centric sites, usability, design, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting

So we’re hearing this and that about Social Networks being the next big thing in the B2B space after the success of social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Digg for the consumer audience and LinkedIn for the business audience. What’s the big deal?

Social networks allow peers to communicate by sharing information, comments and ratings. As a social network visitor you can see what the overall community is doing, plus what individuals in your group are doing. The ABM-Harris 2006 Interactive B2B survey proved that a majority of B2B executives turn to the web when doing research for buying decisions. People are also more likely to trust information that comes from peers over marketing or advertising information. Social networks provide the opportunity to research and share information directly from your peers.

B2B websites have unique audiences - usually a very specific industry or niche, which is visiting the website specifically for information required to do business. One of the top reasons professionals attend B2B conferences and events is to network and connect with their peers. B2B Social networks offer a cost-effective way to connect with peers more often.

How do use this information to improve your own B2B website? Social networks are not effective unless the audience if reasonably large (at least a couple of thousand). If you don’t have that much traffic on your website, see if you can convince an industry association to form a social network so that your customers will be able to share, rate and comment on products and services in your industry. Take a look at a business social network, such as LinkedIn which allows associations to form groups, to connect with your peers online.

Technorati Tags: social networks, B2B social networks, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting

Another year has come to a close. 2007 was pretty exciting in both the B2C and B2B space on the web, as community, sharing, and using the web to find information became commonplace. On the tail of B2C sites like YouTube, Flickr, and iTunes, the B2B audience started to demand video, image and audio information. Posting only a blurb of text about an event, service or product is no longer acceptable. The B2B audience wants to see and hear to make their own observations from as much raw information as possible. Many B2B news and information websites met this need by introducing video sections, posting regular podcasts, blogging and increasing the visual information included in stories. In 2008 this will extend to B2B websites themselves, as manufacturers and service providers increase the range of information they include on their sites.

Community has been big on the web for a couple of years now and most Internet users are comfortable with instant messaging (IM), boards, blogs and sharing information. With the emergence of sites like Digg, people now have the opportunity to share links and comments to stories. B2B sites have embraced this by including more forums and adding the ability to comment right on stories. Look to see this increase in 2008 to include more B2B user generated content, such as reviews and sharing capabilities on websites.

Customer-centric will be the name of the game in 2008 as the B2B audience becomes accustomed to customer-centric sites in the B2C world. Social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn have hit the news in 2007, and the buzz has started for these to be big topics for B2B in 2008. The B2B audience in 2008 will demand more user-generated content with the ability to connect and share information.

Technorati Tags: customer-centric sites, usability, community, B2B, internet consulting, B2B internet consulting