One thing is for certain, I do not consider myself to be a social media “expert”. What I do consider myself to be is an analyst.. a researcher and an architect. From the infancy of YouTube, Blogger and MySpace through the explosion of sites such as Facebook and Twitter, I have paid keen attention to what these sites are doing, where they are headed and what the users are saying.
Equally intriguing, as far as I’m concerned have been observations of the various social media business models .. or lack thereof. Annual reports fascinate me!
These observations led me to begin a software project back in January 2006 which aimed to couple the content rich properties of sites driven by software such as WordPress and Joomla with the undeniable benefits of social media. The project is now finished and going through the 10th and final round of de-bugging. It has been a long, expensive project but as my father always said ” No education is cheap! “
Keep in mind that we are a small company, 100% internally funded. So to say I am proud of how this software project turned out would be a colossal understatement.
I’m looking forward to our first, internal site launch on the platform in Q4 2009 and to working an interesting business model with a few clients in 2010. What excites me most about this project is not the software itself, it is the business model this software allows us to explore .
Oh and for those who have asked… I have no interest in attempting to compete with Facebook, Myspace and Twitter … While I may be confident … I’m not that arrogant.