We live in a socially connected world where Facebook and Twitter are ubiquitous, but the reality is that we are social ‘animals’ and need to physically interact with others in similar tribes, niche groups and communities.
This fact has been the driver for the new generation of hyperlocal, invitation only social networks that have been growing round the world.
If the first and second generations of social networking portals were about opening up the world, the third generation is about closing it again. Invitation only sites are proliferating everywhere, creating exclusive, gated virtual communities that exclude the masses and attract elite groups.
A Small World helped kick off the ‘invitation-only’ trend by restricting new membership to those invited by current members. ASW is a private online community that feeds on an existing international network of people who are connected by three degrees of separation. Members share similar backgrounds, interests and perspectives (and similar size bank accounts). The network offers tools and user generated content to help members manage their private, social and business lives. Membership to ASW is by invitation only. Members who meet certain criteria can invite a limited number of their friends to the network.
But sometimes an invitation just isn’t enough. Gaining entry into this new generation of private online world can involve an intimidating process of review, such as career-orientated sites doostang.com, where aspiring members and recent graduates must submit their resumes to be considered for acceptance. Doostang describes itself as a “career accelerator” and boasts that Bluechip employers hire 1 in 4 members; this still leaves 75% unemployed? Other sites are blatantly and proudly parochial and exclusive, such as aprivateclub.com, which is only for New Yorkers in-the-know and in-the-money.
If you’re a young, affluent Chinese guy or girl living in one of the large cities in China, and your picture was taken by one of the contracted paparazzi teams that now roam the clubs and malls, you’ll have heard of P1.cn. This is an exclusively naughty and niche members only, social network community. You were probably then identified by a friend or existing member and “tagged” as potential. The next thing you know, you’re hooked into the P1.cn social network world of exclusivity, affluence, showmanship and virtual catwalks.
In Europe decayenne.com offers invited members, online and real life meet and greet events and boast a membership that spans all the global oasis of the affluent.
Even Wall Street can commiserate the global financial meltdown with each other in the privacy of cyberspace at bankersavenue.com, (maybe it should have been named ‘wankersavenue’) a members-only portal for bankers who must be invited to join. The password being their secret bank account numbers in the Virgin Islands and Luxemburg, now that Switzerland has opted to show-and-tell.
So what does this say about society? We still live in a 7/84 world (7% of the population own 84% of the wealth) and the 90/10 rule is the new 80/20, where 90% of consumers are influenced by the other 10% in their purchasing behaviour.
These new, gated social network sites are manna from heaven for the Luxury brand advertisers and attract substantial revenue. The effectiveness of this new breed of social networks proves that we are not all on the same cloud and that instead of carrying several exclusive plastic cards in their wallets, the elite are now engaging on private networth-networks.