by Adrian C. Ott

I hate to do things twice.  Re-work, system crashes and "do overs" are very frustrating.  Why?  Because they take precious time that could be spent elsewhere.  We all want to do things once and move on. 

With the proliferation of social media platforms we are hitting a saturation point - Facebook, Ning, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Biznik, Plurk, corporate networks, industry communities and others .  My head is spinning.  My colleagues and clients are telling me this as well.  How many communities can we participate in and still have a life? 

In 2007, we predicted in Fast-Forward 2010: Social Media Shake-out  that people will make decisions as to where they will spend their precious time.  Once social media is understood, customers will avoid duplicating efforts.  Customers will strive to be more efficient with their time by consolidating their regular social media interactions to a number of favorite communities. 

Customers will gravitate toward communities that give them the biggest return and highest value for their time. Critical mass (or what economists call "network effects") plays a key role because the value of social networking lies in locations where others congregate.  If we need to reach John, do we need three social networking sites to link, friend or follow John?  One will do nicely thank you. 

This scenario is beginning to play out as customers are flocking to sites like Facebook and Twitter. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook recently stated that they have more than 200 million users.  If Facebook were a country it would be the fifth largest in the world.  Indeed, a few mega-communities will dominate, however I don't envision a one-size-fits-all. We have different dimensions to our lives and sometimes we like to keep things separate (e.g. work and personal).  What I foresee is:

• Customers will belong to one to three mega communities.  These will house our master profiles. For example, Facebook for friends.  LinkedIn for business.  Customers want to manage a limited set of profiles.  This is why we see many sites with system generated user pictures in the members list.  Most people don't want to bother setting these up multiple times. 
• Customers will belong to a limited number of niche communities:  Customers will focus on a few communities that offer unique value-add to their life and interests.  For example, a professional industry community, a personal hobby community, a civic service community etc..  Certainly everyone has niche preferences, that's what makes us all different and special. We expect that most people will participate somewhere in the range of 2 - 10 niche social media communities. Note: This is not in the hundreds or thousands, therefore not every company will be able to build an active community.  Let's not confuse customer service with an emotional customer attachment.   
• Certain niche communities will reside inside a mega community: This enables companies to reach and leverage users that are already registered in a larger community.  LinkedIn groups are an excellent example of people with shared interests coming together. 
• Consolidated reporting and propagation tools will increase in popularity:  Tools that allow one to see a  consolidated view on their desktop of activity across their social networks are a great time saver.  Certain social media users will opt to broadcast to their communities using a single propagation tool to save time getting the word out.  We are beginning to see this with tools such as TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com) that enables Twitter users to segment and filter Tweets and Facebook entries, and Minggl (www.minggle.com) that crosses many of social communities.

Customer decisions to save time and avoid "do-overs" is driving this trend to consolidate their social media interactions. Customer want to accomplish more in less time.

Executives need to be mindful of these narrowing choices as they make their social media investment plans. The game stakes have been raised as sites reach critical mass.   In certain markets they may have already missed the wave to build a proprietary community because critical mass has been achieved through other means.  Alternatives need to be considered.