Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Who's Making Money on Social Information/Media?

In an effort to learn more about who is making money and who isn't in the world of social information/media, I'm putting forth a list of the business models that I've come across. They are:
  • Sell Enabling Technology (e.g. IBM Lotus, MSFT SharePoint, Yammer, PBWiki; Radian6)
  • Provide a Transaction Platform and Take a Cut (e.g. EBay; SecondLife)
  • Sell Real World Schwag (e.g. Threadless)
  • Sell Digital Schwag (e.g. Facebook Gifts)
  • End User Subscriptions (e.g. Everquest)
  • Sell Access to User Data (e.g. Facebook; Radian6)
  • Charge for Access to the Users (e.g. Advertising; Polls; Etc.)
  • Sell Consulting/Learning Services (e.g. Social Media Consultants; Social Media Publishers (e.g. Forrester); Social Media Conferences)
Are these right? What other models are there? Which models are the most profitable? It seems that to some extent all of these - with the possible exception of Charging for access to users given the scale/cost base required - are viable primary business models.

Posted via email from samirsingh's posterous

2 comments:

  1. Samir,

    A useful list, however, it focuses more on new tools and interaction models rather than how entities and organizations interface with them, and new business realities.

    I'm interested in a model that combines your last and your first, sell enabling tools, and consult with organizations that need to move/permute/evolve in order to take advantage of the new tools/realities that they represent.

    Innovation is outpacing adoption at an ever-accelerating rate. I contend that 60-90% of the operational upside in the marketplace currently resides in tackling cultural and political barriers, rather than technological ones.

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  2. This makes sense Brett. In your work have you been able to classify the types of cultural and political barriers that social information services must address to work successfully? Sounds like the makings of another post! I've personally come across 1) a lack of understanding of what is being proposed with a social information tool. It seems the default that everyone has in their minds are Wikipedia, Blogs, or Social Networks and if it's none of those then it doesn't exist. I've also seen 2) what I would call the "Sharepoint effect" in which a leader uses their having (not use of) Sharepoint as rationale for not exploring anything else. This usually takes the form of "Oh, I think Sharepoint already has blogs." (Note the effects of issue one above) I'd say the final one that I've seen is 3) edge case fear (paranoia?) of what personal information (health records, credit card numbers) might be shared on these systems in violation of law. These all certainly must be overcome.

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