Back To The Future: Social Networking Consultancies

Technologies that build on the notion of organizing cyber-tribes and communities have emerged over the past ten years. Social networks are commonplace and product-centric communities have taken hold in both business and consumer marketplaces. “Community Manager” is a key role in many newer businesses, and is becoming prevalent in more mature industries.

Startups that provide technology to identify tribes (e.g., Quantcast, RapLeaf), and analytics that can identify tribal trends (Jaspersoft) are growing. New companies such as Sense Networks build technology that segments individuals based on their physical movements.

Consumer segmentation that traditionally has been based on demographics and highly specific buying habits has changed and now includes fluid location data and social links. This shift in what constitutes a consumer segment will lead to large opportunities for new types of systems integrators and technology strategy businesses.

The primary reason is that large corporations will be inundated with tribal data, dashboards and analytics but will be unsure how to craft and execute business strategies that derive revenue from those tribes they identify. They will need a guide who can help sort through the glut of segmentation and analysis tools, and implement tribal marketing and technology initiatives that are aligned with their business strategy.

It is interesting how few tribal identification and analysis technology companies have started professional services teams. JitterJam has a marketing strategy offering, while Omniture and Jaspersoft have consultants for hire, but many businesses in the space either are extremely technically driven or simply lack the resources or expertise to take advantage of this emerging opportunity.

It would not be surprising to see entities that look like some of the old dot-com strategy businesses emerge. Remember marchFirst, Scient and Viant? We could end up seeing social network oriented versions of these companies in the not so distant future.