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.