You you have finally decided to join the masses and join a social networking site. Which one do you choose? For the most part it is the same as picking your fashions, you go with the what is most popular with your friends. Most people do not choose MySpace because it is free and has tools - it is because their friends are there. How would you like to be the only person you know inside of Orkut? What is the point of being in a social network with no one you know? I use both Facebook and LinkedIn. The trouble with Facebook is that no one that I interact with uses it and everyone with a busines smotive uses LinkedIn. I have 2 buddies on Facebook and about 40 on LinkedIn, without even trying.

 The links below provide some comparisons of network sites, which are interesting, but meaningless. It does not matter what services a site offers. All that matters is who uses it that you know. It is like the introduction of the FAX machine. The features on a FAX machine did not matter so much as whether your business associates also had one.

So will the military even license and install SN software on its own closed networks? I think there are a number of variables that play into this:

1. Is SN software sufficiently complex to justify licensing a commercial product rather than just having a company build a new one from scratch for the military? The SN software I have used appears pretty simple - much simpler than all of the military software projects I have worked on.
2. Is an SN company set-up to license its software for private network use? And, is that company willing to comply with government regulations required to sell to the military? I would suggest that an SN company use a 3rd party to handle military contracting and sales. Most commercial companies are very poor at working with the military  - and, conversely, most defense contractors are very poor at commercial sales.
3. Will SN ride over the military comms systems, or just be limited to the business systems? There are a nubmer of disconnected networks in the military. The Business, Operations, and Training systems live on networks that are not connected to each other and there are a number of specialty networks beyond these.
4. Soldiers belong to a number of physical social networks. Can SN software support these multiple identities? e.g. family, friends, sports, base assignment, unit assignment, job type (MOS), branch, university, physical location, task organization, etc.
5.  What value proposition can SN offer to the military? It has to do more than just connect you to your family. For that you can use Facebook or MySpace. Inside of military networks, there has to be some advantage over the way things are already done. (Finding this is another reason to use a knowledgable 3rd party to sell it.)

Comparisions of Social Network Sites:

• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
• Read/Write Blog: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_network_faceoff.php
• Market Vertical: http://www.marketverticalpartners.com/2007/07/01/social-networking-websites-comparison.html