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| the New Tribes and the New Excitement for VCs |
There are hot discussions about some new social networking websites such as Friendsters, Tribe.net, Ryze and, especially, LinkedIn. The networking among people that we we know can create a network of links of links of links… which connect us with our friends and their friends and friends’ friends…. that finally could build a big network. The network of our connection is called as our "tribe".
All of those sites could be based on the “Small World Project” of Columbia University that has an experiment to prove that “ any two people in the world can be connected ‘via six degrees of separation’.”
The same experiment was conducted by the University of Virginia in “Oracle of Bacon” experiment. This humorous-serious project is based on Hollywood actors/actresses' connection with Kevin Bacon; It gives a “Bacon number” equals to 1 to any actor/actress in Hollywood that had been in the same movie with Kevin Bacon and adding the number as the degrees of separation is increasing.
For example:
Kevin Bacon --Lawrence Fishburne; both are in the same movie in "Mystic River", so Fishburne has a Bacon number = 1
Kevin Bacon--Lawrence Fishburne--Keanu Reeves; Keanu Reeves for example has never been in the same with Bacon, but Reeves was in "the Matrix" movie with Fishburne, so Reeves has Bacon number = 2.
Surprisingly, based on the experiment on about 60,000 Hollywood’s actors/actresses in its database, the average Bacon number is 2. 945. It means in a specific business, it even takes less than 3 degrees of separation to connect two people.
So, what does it mean?
It means, this world is smaller than you thought!
….and that's why LinkedIn is very hot now!
And many venture capitalists are very excited for this trend which they see as the invention of Internet 2.0!
LinkedIn is the only social networking that offers privacy and security, and very fit with business environment; photos and cold-calls are not allowed. People could only contact the member that he/she knows. They could contact somebody via people that he/she knows through the link, and that’s why referrals is very important.
Many of LinkedIn’s members now are some tech venture capitals as well as programmers or enterpreneurs, such as Piere Omidyar, the founder of eBay. Some of the people in tech-biz already used LinkdIn for finding business partners, hiring people or apply for emplpyments.
LinkedIn has just got funding from Sequoia Capital, the VC that also backed Google, Yahoo, and Paypal in the old days. Now, LinkedIn claimed have about 40,000 members and made about 1,000 referrals per month. There is still uncertainty on how LinkedIn develop its business model to make revenue; the company said it may start to offer premium subcription once they can achieve 1,000 referrals per day which is estimated will on June 2004.
So, what’s the nice part for us?
Since it’s free, secure (no spam, at least for now), and does not take more than 10 minutes to sign up…why do we not join-in and use it as the place to build our own "tribe"?
References
Small World Project (http://smallworld.columbia.edu/)
Oracle of Bacon at Virginia (http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/)
American Bar Association (http://www.abanet.org/lpm/magazine/articles/v30is1an20.html)
The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32066-2003Nov12?language=printer)