I recently asked on my company's blog, InteractiveQA.com, and on LinkedIn and on various lists "What's your social network strategy?" Specifically, I asked if people were on multiple networks, setting up their own, or participating at a corporate level on an existing network. The following is the result of those questions and my own thoughts and research.

A social network is simply a highly internetworked and active community. Frank Diana, Chief Product Officer at Aelera called it "an evolution of collaboration technologies."

In some sense, "social network" is just the next term after Web 2.0, which replaced various others. Social networks are loosely controlled, user generated, participatory enivonrnments, not necessarily by individual design, but by the availability of technology and evolving desires of users. Social network 'owners' can attempt to control them, which is generally only possible if they bend their will to the will of the users actually controlling them. Trying to force a community in a different direction from the direction it is going in will likely result in the network remaining, empty, and the community having moved on. The landscape is riddled with sites that once had a community that no longer do for this reason.

With that in mind, what are people doing with social networks? Are they actively using them? Multiple ones? Making them?

Antony Satyadas, Chief Competitive Marketing Officer, IBM Lotus Software summed up the shift from production->consumption to what it is becoming as the "community centric paradigm shift from document centric." Instead of one group making and another group consuming information, entertainment, thought and even marketing, we now have communities of peers. As the interest in discussion and sharing and networking has burst the constraints of email, bulletin boards and all of it's individual parts, social networks have emerged.

While many people are intentionally making an effort to restrict their activities to one or only a couple of organized networks, they seem to realize it is because of their own limitations. They want to focus their energies on one network before going on to another.

Interestingly, the actual social networks are not ones dictated by corporations, they are the ones naturally developing. A dictated social network is typically transition. It's something between the production->consumption model focusing on documents and the community centric model. Natural social networks are too amorphous to stick on one social network. If you belong to one social network you'll find people you're connected with inviting you to all sorts of other networks. They attempt to keep in contact with you via Plaxo, to IM and email you, to keep you posted via Twitter, to read your blogs and respond to them, and get you to join other dictated social networks. The social network is a maintenance of connections through the available means of technology. As Michael Walsh, CEO of Leverage Software said "...we need to be in many networks and the providers need to make it easy to 'move' between networks without friction."

Why should they do this? If they want to exist, they have no choice. Lock-in is a barrier to continued participation. People will move to any number of other networks that don't trap their data.

Many social networks focus on a particular industry, interest, region or activity. Participating on a network requires some hook into a need or interest. If that need is met, a user will participate and will find how to be noticed, how to connect and get others to join and connect. Overly open ended networks or those focusing on qualities or subjects that are not interest activities or needs will not sustain themselves. As Amodiovalerio Verde, Web Marketing Manager & Technical IT Manager at Moby S.p.A. said "Having a good social network strategy starts with choosing the 'right' network ( and often bigger doesn't mean better ) to concentrate on or you can lose a lot of your time."

For example, those who are in or were recently in college will like Facebook - they'll find lots of their peers there. Older people will not find peers and will likely not see the appeal, and may find LinkedIn, Xing or Ryze more appealing. Those who were already adept at maintaining friendships and connection may not have a need for a formal, sponsored social network and may not like the percribed methods of communication.

Those who need to advance in their career, need sales leads, want opinions on their photography or activities will seek out and connect to people they may not know. Opinions on acceptable connection strategies are often strong, and stated more emphatically than religious beliefs. Official opinions on this on commercial social networks seem to drift a bit. LinkedIn at one time told people to only connect with those they'd recommend. Now you can recommend specific people, and connect with people you say you don't really know.

At what stage in the networking process you're in can vary considerably. Some connect, then email and call and get to know each other. Some never do. Some knew eachother for years before connecting. In my personal experience I've seen people trying to personally know every person they connect with who have reached the breaking point in this strategy, and who are more casual in who they connect with now.

Just as when you join an email mailing list though you may not know many people on it, you know you share some interest. Over time you may come to know some of the people on the list well, but there will always be people you don't know. Essentially, social networks are individually owned, and so your individual ability to know all of your connections will lessen as you are connected to more people. Artificially attempting to counter this is difficult to impossible.

Maintaining your own social network means invidividuals are increasingly having to use CRM solutions, rather than just their memories and email logs, and are needing to devote hours a week on IM, Skype, email, mailing lists, groups and sites. Restricting the number of connections requires lots of explanations to friendly strangers, and occasional concessions involving calls and emails to get better acquanted.

Ed Laczynski, Chief Technologist, LTech Consulting LLC, discussed the area between running your own network and being a participant on an existing one. This middle area is achieved by building apps on networks, such as Facebook. It allows "...the opportunity to build instant exposure to a highly prized demographic if you can key in on a subject matter (like jobs, gaming, etc) that resonates with the network's user base." Opening up an API/platform or even just allowing users to export contact information could be seen as loosening control over users, but in fact giving up that attempt at control allows users to partipate without hesitation and use a platform as their own, instead of going elsewhere. As has been shown through Google applications, users are very willing to sacrifice privacy in exchnage for convenience, and they're more ready to do that when there are few if any blocks between them and their own data.

The line between individuals and companies has blurred considerably, as has the line between corporate sponsored, dictated social networks and interactive communities. Sincere participation is the key to an effective social network strategy, whatever the purpose. Awareness of where ones network is headed and the ability to move and adapt yourself and the technology you're using to maintain your network, whether personal, professional, or for-profit social network is also necessary. Some contacts will want communication via RSS, some IM, others voice or other means. Maintaining a network means reaching out and reinforcing the value of connection, however necessary.