Of late, social networking has earned a major place in the web world with growing number of net-savvy people being interested in exchanging ideas, placing own views, exploring new interests and avenues and getting informed on latest happenings on the Internet. Some of the big names in this area include Myspace, Twitter, Linkedin, Digg, etc. Despite these success stories, there are instances of failures as well. Read on to find top major reasons for such failures of social networking sites:
• Concern over privacy: It is but natural that net surfers, especially the aged group, have serious concerns over the privacy of the data they input into the social networking sites. The younger lot might have no signs of worry, but the older ones nurse severe anxiety regarding identity theft and data distortion. There is no denying the fact that the information entered into a social network is open to risks of distortion and deception.
• Quantity over quality: It is true that most of the social networking sites emphasize on the number of connections a user has been able to establish. Sadly enough, quantity wins over quality here, as it states that the greater the number of connections you have, the higher will be your value. This leaves very little space for proper judgment.
• Missing context: Social networks, by and large, have the drawback of missing context. They deter you from knowing a person in a total context. For instance, the guy I know as a social friend remains unknown to me in the context of an employee. This creates a context mismatch and poses problems in understanding relationships.
• Lack of applications integration: Being standalone apps makes the social networking sites unpopular. Getting to know people just for the heck of it can become boring at times. It gathers interest only when there is an opportunity to get a job, earn money, obtain useful information from experts or win a new date. But recently efforts have resulted in integrating social networks with other apps.
• Confined domain: After all, the social networks, majorly, are confined territories with no allowance for sharing of information with others, lest their power as the nucleus for all relationships gets diluted. This kind of interoperability mars the popularity of social networking sites, posing as one of the prime reasons for its failure.
It can be suggested that a social network that is willing to yield more to the world will be able to avail of better integration with other applications and gain benefits from other sites linking to it.
