With the growth of Facebook it’s practically axiomatic that starting a new social network is akin to a start-up aspirin. So, we guide most clients interested in cultivating a network around their audience to leverage the existing dominant tools and networks to do so. LinkedIn and Facebook have their warts, but if your objective is straight audience share, it’s a lot more work to build your own when your audience is likely fed up with too-many-logins-itis.
But that’s not to say that there isn’t a case to be made otherwise. Jon Bischke over at Techcrunch offers a brief rundown of a few pro-level networks whose audience is not well served by the big players:
But there’s an area where signs are emerging of “different networks for different types of people”: professional networking. We’ll start with the obvious. LinkedIn is the dominant professional social network. It has become the system of record for the online resume for many professionals. And the growth of LinkedIn as a blogging platform shouldn’t be underestimated.