Marketing

So far we’ve taken a look at several social network software vendors: Leverage Software, Community Server, Prospero, Small World Labs, Pluck and Ning. These vendors run the gambit from very expensive to free, but their core functionality is very similar. Differences come mostly with integration into your own current website, single sign-on, and analytics.

If you’re a small company or not sure how social networks are going to work for you, Ning is an excellent place to start since you can get an ad-driven version for no cost. You can then upgrade to a non-ad version (and run your own ads), but keep in mind that Ning is for smaller networks and does not offer integration with your own website.

For larger companies, my current forerunner is Small World Labs, with their full set of features, modular implementation, and php-based system. Their 3 price-points make them very affordable and their offerings can be tailored to meet the needs of your specific social network. Content from your website can appear within the network and content from the network can appear on your website – effectively pulling your website into the network. Most importantly, I feel this option offers the best opportunity to scale cost-effectively if your network takes off.

I just came across GroupSwim who built community software that can be used internally, externally, with customers, users, developers, or audience. This may be very useful for B2B companies hoping to interact with their customers, so I’m going to try to get a demo set up for next week.

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

Community Server by Telligent powers some large communities for NFL, National Geographic Magazine Online, Intel, Microsoft Game Studios, Mazda MX-5, and MySpace forums, among others. Community Server touts ease-of-use and has a community of its own with a documentation wiki and support forum. The software is powered by .NET, which can be downloaded and installed or hosted by Telligent. Standard community fare comes out-of-the-box: blogs, forums, profiles, private messaging, photos and files. Functionality and capabilities can be extended through add-ins and customizations (capabilities list). There is support for single sign-in with your website and analytics through Web Trends or Google Analytics (possibly other tag-based packages).

Three packages offer different included functionality and pricing (full list of features). Additional licenses can be purchased to extend the number of most of these functions.

Professional:

• $2000 + $500/year support
• Supports approximately 1 million page views per month and 25,000 members per server
• 2 websites
• 100 blogs
• 100 forums
• 200 photo galleries
• 1,000 shared files
• Unlimited content mirroring (displaying content on the community through RSS feeds)

Enterprise:

• Contact for cost, support included
• Supports approximiately 10 million page views per month and 100,000 members per server
• 3 websites
• Unlimited blogs, forums, shared files, photo galleries and content mirroring
• Enterprise email integration (to allow users to send and reply to messages on forums and blogs)
• Distributed jobs to support high traffic sites

Hosted:

• Starts at $199/mo for up to 250,000 page views per month, additional at $0.009 per page view
• Includes everything but add-ons
• 25 blogs
• 25 forums
• 500 shared files
• 50 photo galleries
• 100 content mirrors

I like the community aspect Telligent has created for support of their software, but I personally would not want to support a .NET application, even hosted (personal preference). There also does not seem to be any out-of-the-box functionality to integrate the community content into your website (although you can integrate content from your site into the community through an RSS feed). The Hosted and Professional packages are close in first-year price, with Professional offering more of everything, but also requiring you to install and host the community. The Hosted package is a very good deal for a business looking to start a social network without much cost, as long as you’re not looking to integrate the community content into your own website.

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

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