Niche Social Networks, who's doing this?
IAVA, Social Work Network, Non-Profit ones?
http://iava.org/
http://www.socialworknetwork.com
Another topic I've mentioned numerous times, but have yet to stumble upon anything that really addresses this issue. We are faced with conflicting approaches, general large social networks sites like Facebook and Google Plus, and niche industries and groups like social workers, non-profit workers, even armed forces and government service workers. Undoubtedly, these kinds of neworks are necessary, as are probably more beneficial than most startups being launched today.
Mashable recently covered IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America) and how it not only is a social network allowing soldiers to keep in touch with one another upon returning home, but it also acts as an information and services portal for veterans to discover and obtain much needed help.
But when one takes a look at efforts to create these niche social networks, like the Social Work Network, it quickly becomes apparent that the approach is from someone within the industry seeing a need, but lacking the know-how and financial backing to create a quality service. The Social Work Network hopes to become a one-stop shop for all social worker related news, resources, and discussion, but it has stalled at simply being just another basic social network where users create profiles.
The main problems are as I mentioned, that most people within these niches see a need and where it would be useful but don't know how to get things to a usable level. And then you are faced with the quesiton of whether to create a completely separate service for each niche or leverage existing social networks like Facebook/Google+ or create a new umbrella social network?
But let's step back and look at what would be similar across many industries:
1. Users - Most basic is every user would present a profile with relevant information.
2. User <> User network - Simply friends and acquaintances, linking people together.
3. Organizations - Includes the ones people work for and associations and others. You would need each organization to create a profile page.
4. User > Organization - Allows users to link to organizations.
4a. Organization <> Organization - relationships between organizations. Easiest to envision police precincts belonging to cities, etc.
5. Communication - Forums, Messaging, Tweets, etc.
6. News Feeds - What's happening that's related to the industry.
7. Resources - Lists of resources and guides of how-tos.
8. Job search/postings
Looking at that basic list, one has to admit that Facebook satisfies all of that. But the problem is that Facebook does not allow group/topical filtering at this time. For example, say you wanted to enter the realm of social work and have everything you see and all the people you interact with be in that realm. It's conceivable to use http://socialwork.facebook.com and then it would automatically filter all messages, users, posts, organizations, etc. All the latent Facebook functionality would still be useable, but now instead of interacting with your general friends and social network, you are now specifically within social work. Yeah, I've covered this idea before.
But the addition is to then create libraries of additional functionality that elected admins of these groups can add. Examples would be: forums, resources, news. Also, to open up APIs so that the group can get their own developers to interface with external data sources, like governmental agencies.
Yeah, all of this sounds like a behemoth of a project. But I'd think that it is a definite necessity in the future.