Social Capital & Attention in Social Software

Wow - I've got a bit behind with the blog these days haven't I! eek - no excuse, but there is a valid reason which we'll reveal soon. I've still got my notes I wanted to publish from an event I spoke at last week for NMK's Beer & Innovation event, which was covered by deirdre's blog who also lists a few good other blog links with their take on the whole thing. Now, what I wanted to really pick up on even a week after the event, is this whole concept of "Social Capital & Attention". So, I believe that there is a time shortage that prevents people from commiting to too many social software applications above and beyond that initial curiosity stage. Techcrunch US has been famous for this in the past - cover someone on the blog, drive a large amount of traffic in two days, then watch as the users go elsewhere. The Scenario

1. Social software is effective when it takes a real human behaviour that exists offline and enhances it for the realworld space. People shared photos and videos before Flickr and youtube, they compared prices before Kelkoo, they got product recommendations before Crowdstorm, and made friends before MySpace. Online lets people do this much more efficiently and on a far greater scale
2. The "problem" is that we have limited "brain bandwidth" and only so much of our attention that can go around. As a user how many social networking / user generated content / web application sites can we actually spend time on regularly? As a company - how do we compete for attention and keep them coming back?

Some Stats (no I can't be bothered to link them all..) :: Over 18 social bookmarking sites (del.icio.us, furl, blinklist...) :: Over 15 team collaboration web apps (basecamp, zimbra, zohoplanner, 30boxes...) :: More than 10 social communities (myspace, orkut, linkedin, facebook) :: 11+ ajax style start pages (pageflakes, netvibes, google IG) :: Squillions of mashups :: 6+ to-do lists (ta-da, remember the milk) :: Numerous website analytics (MINT, measure map, GA, crazyegg) :: 24+ people news / media aggregation (digg, last.fm, newsvine, reddit..) :: 5 main social shopping sites (Crowdstorm, ....and I forget the rest! ) :: 10+ image storing and sharing sites (riya, flickr, photobucket) :: squillions of blogs & 7+ blog filters (technorati, tailrank, bloglines, findory) :: 17 video storage sites (youtube, brightcove, fireant, videoegg) :: 7+ online calendars The broadstuff blog suggests that social networks can be broken into four distinct classes of usage. Ryan Carson says we should focus on "apps that are based on specific problems that need to be solved". e.g. linkedin for business networking. Read his article on "Why I don't use social software". Philip Wilkinson (that's me btw.. :-) )"it's help to go vertical to one degree of depth and focus on addressing the need of that core group of users in the social space" So: Is it true that a Darwin evolutionary process will take place where only the strong survive (better team, better product, adaptability, better marketing, most money, luck..) OR will we see more and more nich apps and commmunities develop where they will all survive in their own patch of the world?

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tags: social capital, attention, socialcapital, nmk