Social Networking - Community versus Audience

Over the past few years, we have seen a lot of "social networks" enter the scene and although there seems to be hundreds of interesting networks, concepts, widgets and resources - I think most of these sites lack the key element to social networking - the community.

I think at some point, we just started lumping everyone into this bucket of social networking - without really qualifying what exactly makes these sites tick.

Is it a community? Or is it really just an Audience?

Here is my first example. MySpace. Community or Audience? I say Audience. Driven primarily by people's love for music in the beginning, and now a very large database of mini-websites with no clear organization - I think the site is more of a one-to-many conversation. I just don't see this site as a community. To some degree, the sheer size of the network (millions of users) proves my point. Communities aren't measured in the millions - but rather in hundreds (or even tens). Community is an intimite network of people who know each other - that share common interests, and communicate one-to-one.

Take another site - Facebook. Community or Audience? I say Community. The building blocks of this social network is based on real relationships expanded to the web. Friends communicate with Friends, and network to meet new Friends. Although there are millions of users on FaceBook, they are secluded into groups (your college, your town, etc).

Lets move to a business example - LinkedIn. Community or Audience? I say Audience (although I believe it started off as a community, but their model shifted when they started focusing on job placement, expert forums and references). A business person doesn't go to LinkedIn to grow their network, meet new people and connect through similar interests - they go to LinkedIn to search a database of profiles for job candidates, do reference checks or find a contact at a potential client. Are there elements of community? Sure, when it launched it leveraged "who you know" - but in my opinion the structure of the site, functionality doesn't foster relationships beyond who you already know.

At the other end of the spectrum, Fast Pitch! is a community. Not only does its structure connect people based on similar interests, work experience and industry - but it fosters the communities through social media (incorporating rich media, blogs and other content). Sure, both LinkedIn and Fast Pitch has profiles. Both have the ability for people to connect and create networks - but there is a distinct difference in the behavior of the user, and how the "ecosystem" of the community grows and how a user builds value and contributes to the value of the network. I measure the value of a network not by the quantity of users - but by the quality of content and relationships. Compare it to a busy city, where noone stops to say hello, and very few people really know each other - versus - a small mid-west town where there is much more solidarity and familiarity when walking the streets.