Some days ago I received a press release which stated that in UK the cost of social networks is around 6,5 GBP – at least a recent study claims it to be that high. Such numbers are always questionable, for sure. Which are the real costs of someone maintaining his own social network? Difficult to calculate… But: Even 1 billion would be too much.

There is some value in social networks, especially in business networks. But it is obvious that it takes a lot of time to maintain contacts, find people you know and especially to do this multiple times for different networks. I personally have chosen to limit myself to three networks: Xing, LinkedIn, and StayFriends. And I really hate it to do the same work in Xing and LinkedIn.  I could easily split half my own “costs” for maintaining social networks if I easily could exchange information between these networks. User-centric IAM approaches applied to social networks thus might cut the costs significantly. One more reason to doubt the future of today’s social networks.

There is a broad discussion around the use of identity information at StudiVZ these days. They have changed their agreements with their users and will present personalized adverts. That has lead to an intensive discussion in their user community. Another interesting change can be found at Xing since some two weeks: At the starting page you can now directly see not only the number of new contacts of your contacts (like at LinkedIn) but the names of the new contacts.

I personally found that change a little bit to open. For sure you can look up the contact lists of your contacts as long as they aren’t hidden. But there is a difference between acting actively and this new situation where you are passive. I’m not sure whether I like that – and I doubt that other users are convinced of the value of this change.

But, more important than the question whether I will hide my contacts at Xing as a consequence of this change there is another aspect which is common for both described situations: Social networks are at a critical point. And their next steps will influence the future not only of some single social networks but of the approach in general.

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