Before looking at the social networking market overall (see my previous posting), I want to show you an example of what a successful system can offer. Not all its characteristics translate well into the corporate world but you might be surprised at how few those are.

I'm not here reviewing the service or the company behind it, nor am I endorsing it or its content. Instead, I'm suggesting it to you as a simple way of getting to know what a modern social networking system can offer. Even if you're already au fait with these technologies, I recommend a visit, to see an example of well-executed design and good integration of features.

The service is Yelp, which apparently is a contraction of "Yellow Pages". (If you want to see how soberly and literally the Yellow Pages people have adapted to the Web, look at Yell.com. It covers a much wider range of services, though.)

Yelp is a reviews and recommendation service for shoppers, diners and travellers. There's nothing new about this. Amazon has for years shown reader recommendations, many of them genuine, to supplement product details from vendors. Buyers and sellers on eBay know that their respective ratings make the difference when choosing whom to sell to or buy from.

There are many other specialised 'review and recommend' sites but few come across as thriving, at least in Britain. One of the few is TripAdvisor, which has more visitors but has been going since 2000, 4 years longer than Yelp. Another, homegrown, is Qype.

The Yelp service boasts of over 20 million visits a month and says that members have posted more than over 6 million local reviews. It is both a measure of and a contributor to the service's success that it currently covers most large American and Canadian cities. Since January 2009, it has also covered major towns and cities in the United Kingdom and, from June 2009, Ireland. It makes its money from associated advertising, with businesses also being able to promote favourable reviews in the list of search results.

Features

Yelp incorporates many of the tools you'd expect to find in a modern social networking system. There's scarcely a trick missed. As well as supplier details and reviews, it offers, in alphabetical order:

- annotated maps of business locations
- blogs - here and here (by Yell's senior staff in the USA only)
- bookmarking
- emailed summaries

- events listings
- forums
- its own email
- links to mobile phones and PDAs for results (but not presently for inputting reviews)

- live directories for each locality
- member profiles
- member rating, based mainly on the number of 'friends' each has and number of reviews he or she has submitted (including 'firsts'). See this person's profile for an example. Alternatively, this one (he's Yelps's CEO)
- members' photographs of localities

- review rating - see these, for instance
- review responses from the relevant business (and advice on doing it). This is a recent addition
- RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom feeds
- searching for places and business (at the top of nearly every page) and for members
- tagging, and a 'tag cloud'. See the bottom of this page.

Members can link to their existing public email services and online contacts and can create personal Web addresses, in the form "http://[name].yelp.co.uk".

Like most social networking services, the Yell site also asks for personal details as part of one's 'profile', such as "Things I love". This is an option. Some people feel happier about giving this sort of information than do others.

About all Yelp lacks are a wiki, podcasts, chat (instant messaging) and members' videos. I'm not saying it needs these, just pointing up how comprehensive its range of services is. They might be on the company's list of improvements for the future.

Worth of the cool

Yell combines extensive, well-presented information with an attractive layout and that indefinable something that says "cool". 'Coolness' is as hard to pin down as it is to retain. Some products and brands are cool for an instant. Others stay that way. Apple computers and devices have been cool for decades. This is through a combination of thoroughgoing good design, frequent product revamps and ceaseless work on maintaining its brand image.

You might not think a corporate social network needs such a quality. Think again. A user's perception of a tool or service is fundamental to how likely he or she is to try it and to stay with it. People don't leave their minds and opinions at the reception desk when they come to work.

The person working on your accounts receivable or your building maintenance system is the same person who, outside work, chooses his or her TV and radio programmes, clothing, holidays, shops and eateries on their attractiveness and social status as well as their utility. He or she will respond the same way to your organization's social networking software.

Dull earnestness in a group communication system usually produces dutiful compliance among its users.

What does this site teach us?

1. Community attracts

Yelp has gone to great trouble to make people want to join its party, which they see as their own. The site makes it easy for the Yelp community to become involved with itself and enjoy doing so. This makes the site more attractive to and, as importantly, more retentive of members.

On its own, this does nothing for Yelp or its business subscribers but it is an essential precondition for lessons 3 and 4 below. This is true of all the most popular social netting sites, such as Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. Not all of them have turned that attractiveness into revenue ('monetized', in the current jargon). Also, without lots of reviewers, there would be too few reviews to make the Yelp site worth visiting. Size counts in this sector.

2. Community binds

If you visit the site, you'll notice that some reviewers are more active than others. Some gain their own popularity and have 'fans'. This also is a normal characteristic of such sites, with trusted advisers having their own following. It's common on corporate systems, too, both internal and external.

In anthropological terms, communities of trust are forming among the communities of interest that Yelp is being midwife to. These are often found in groups whose members are physically close, such as in a village or workplace. Social networking systems help them arise online. (Yelp supplements the process with 'community events' - real gatherings, sometimes with real hangovers afterwards.)

Communities of trust need work and time to develop online and can only form where the members do indeed trust one another or the expert, at least. This can be useful on networks where, say, customers are seeking advice on a company's products and services.

3. Community sells

The business of Yelp is helping consumers help one another. Its business model is to create enough value from consumers' expressed opinions for businesses to pay to advertise on the service and to sponsor select reviews. At this stage, it seems mainly to be living off the money that venture capitalists have advanced it.

In return for the fees they pay Yelp, businesses get their name and details seen by more people. They can also get useful feedback on product and service quality (see below).

4. Community improves

If asked, the owners of most businesses reviewed on Yelp would probably say they have benefited from any justified criticisms aired. They might say this through gritted teeth - most people prefer compliments - but impartial opinion is gold dust in any industry. Like most customer forums, Yelp gives businesses frank assessments and ideas on how to improve.

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As I said at the outset, this is not a review of the Yelp service or company. I'm using it simply as an exemplar of good practice in social network design and management. However, if you would like to find out more about the company, these articles would be good starting points:
- The Guardian
- TechCrunch
- Slate
- Wikipedia (Yes, really!)