Social network aggregation
Social Network Aggregation refers to collecting a persons scattered assets like messages, bookmarks, profiles on multiple social networks. As the usage of Social Networks rises people are ending up using multiple social networks Social network. Social Network Aggregators provide tools or widgets to help collect a person's assets. Several Startups are working to build such tools as noted by Mashable. Some startups are focusing on identity consolidation, others on messaging consolidation and on tracking friends.
Why Social Network Aggregation?
As TheBizofCoding Blog notes:
The need for users to be a member of not just one but multiple social networks can be understood through Barry Wellman's Barry Wellman concept of networked individualism. PEW Internet report The Strenght of Internet Ties explains networked individualism well:
Rather than relying on a single community for social capital, individuals often must actively seek out a variety of appropriate people and resources for different situations
Recent research data from Compete confirms that people are tending to have multiple Social Network Memberships. E.g. 20% of MySpace members are also Facebook Members.
Compete further gives these interesting data points:
- 64% of Facebook members also belong to MySpace.(MySpace has nearly 3x the unique visitors of Facebook and a few years head start.)
- Bebo, Hi5 and Friendster all share more than 49% of their members with MySpace
- LinkedIn shares 42% of its members with Facebook and 32% with MySpace