Tom Shelley asked:

How does social design affect the spread of social networks? What specific features can help hinder the spread of a social network? How different invitation models effect the spread of a social network? Can a rapid spreading site destroy the original community? How to create a truly social space as opposed to YASN?

I'm a very active member in several business related social networks. I'm aware of no academic research. With the limited tools I have, I've tried to run some numbers of my own. Everywhere I look I find the same general pattern. Social networks are not very social. Most people who join never get much further than joining, large numbers never get their personal page built. Many have no links to anyone else. Where membership is by invitation only, significant numbers have only that single connection. Take linkedIn for instance. The median number of contacts of the 9 million LinkedIn members is a number less than 5, probably less than 4. (All the people who have 0 connections are invisible to me.) That's significant because linkedIn begins to be useful when you have 30+ links. AC Nielsen report "In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action". My own data broadly supports that position. The other network I've studied a lot is Ryze. The top 5% of all members attract 50% of all the homepage visits. Ryze was interesting because it's the only network I know of that had successful active forums, but even those are under threat by lack of participation. There are forums in Viadeo, Xing, Ecademy and some Yahoo forums for LinkedIn. In my view none of these work well. The high rate of non-participation in social networks is for me just an uninteresting and sad fact. I've become much more interested in what happens to the few who do participate actively, the top 2% of users. I've witnessed remarkable changes in these people, significant life changing differences. It takes a lot of effort, regular reading, and regular responses to the letters of other people. Maybe 2 hours a day. The result? People who have no opinion about anything, and who seem to agree with everyone, start by just agreeing all the time or by making jokes. They want to be popular. They don't have the courage to take a stand on topics. If they actively participate, over time, a couple of years, they become more knowledgeable and capable of holding an opinion and arguing a point of view. By this time the individual will have become a network leader. These networks evolve. The example I know best began as "Couch Potatoes" became "TV Trivia" and is now called "Truth Seekers". Truth Seekers is a very active 20-40 letters a days forum on international politics, economic and social issues but with a very distinct American bias because most of the members are Americans. The woman who runs this network began to contribute as a guest to other people's forums, started a podcast of her own, and that has led to some work on a radio show. What I've seen over and over is that people begin shy and without the courage, and perhaps without the ability to make a clear statement about what they know. If they PRACTISE every day, first by reading interesting posts, their knowledge grows. Once they begin to actively engage in writing posts themselves the rate of learning increases significantly. Three years on these people are taking significant roles as leaders, not just in the social network but also in their community life and in their business life. This is NOT the promised development that joining the networks is supposed to bring. The promise was that you'd make money by doing business deals with other members. Transformation of WHO YOU ARE was not supposed to be on the menu. Too scary? Maybe, but I've seen a lot of it. This is a simple understandable process. You become good at whatever you DO on a regular basis. Those who seek to understand issues and to share their understanding with other people, get good at learning from others and much better at being able to construct a point of view of their own. The improvement in writing skill is a measurable thing. There are Ryze letters going back over 5 years now that could be used to show both the change in subject matter over time, and the improved ability to construct a viewpoint. The questions Tom Shelly asks are far too difficult to understand. Online Social Networks are too new, and too fragile and too different for research into the questions asked to be possible. There are just too many variables. One of those is cultural. Networks on Ryze got off to such a wonderful start because the original base for members was American. There are many Ryze Networks run by people from India. Those networks have an entirely different flavour. On Xing the networks are dominated by Germans, on Viadeo by the French. The topics of interest, and the style of discussion is quite different in each of these areas. There is a lot of work to do to understand online social networks. My general advice is to ignore the press, and to ignore the number of members claimed by various networks. The propaganda will always lead you away from the truth. Find a group where the activity trail of active members can be traced. Ignore the 95%+ who are really inactive. Find out what the other 5% are doing. Regards John -- "John Stephen Veitch" http://www.ate.co.nz Should we be talking? By all means Google me.