CES 2009 Panel: Social Networks & User Generated Media as a Technology Challenge: The Platform, the Content & the Network. Amid 150″ HD television announcements, this past Saturday I paneled a CES/Digital Hollywood discussion on the start-up requirements of social networks - what the technology challenges were, new ways to acquire users and monetize during recession.

In terms of tech scalability, the panel experts recommended piggybacking on a proven social network (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) while developing a site “voice” or premium content following. White label social network platform solutions were worth considering (see Techcrunch and here, and Mashable and here for archived charts and providers) as a foundation fo review. However, as you grew a social net, at a certain point, you would have to migrate to either a bigger solution or develop your own network, personalized to your users’ needs.

I strongly urged the audience to take into account finding ’singularity’ - that is, not creating a social network just to follow the “me too” mentality of a plurality of sites these days, but to find an original utility or user need unfulfilled that would differentiate your site in the market.

Sites tend to add a social net, microblogging (Twitter), chat, forum, wikis, you-name-it, before they come to grasp that their model isn’t differentiated. While niche social networks are respectable, for them to grow past a certain critical mass, they must be unique.

Early comments and questions revolved around what the minimum starting base of a successful network was with Gather.com’s Gerace putting his number at 10k users. While that number seems a minimum, the panel estimated between 10-50k users

User acquisition centered on how to draw out a user base. Real Girls Media promoted using premium content, including relevant blogs, to draw attention. Gather.com used a partnership with NPR/America Media to bootstrap user attention around their smart “Social with Substance” messaging. When it came to monetization, Gather also used ‘engagement marketing,’ i.e., taking a brand and providing prizing to users to enable brand communication.

ThisNext.com was mentioned recently in the New York Times, for promoting user influencers, i.e., mavens, who attracted users to their online ‘findings’ which drove advertiser page views. On a blue chip corporate level, I mentioned NikePlus.com, a great advertising-free model as the site is a branding environment for Nike runners, which continually adds users to its network by providing a singular service.

These diverse examples revealed the potential in creating networks with social media tools; however, I continually refrained the need to create singularity - to not niche unless you were going to create enough aggregate networks to have significant traffic.

The panel description and participants:

Social networks and user generated media are not always a success. Just like any innovation, the challenge is to be among those left standing after the race to be first is over. On a certain level, the era of the social networks and user generated media sites is just beginning. The technology is just starting to make a social network a living and breathing universe of communications and activity, but there is also the downside of getting up and running only to burn out and lose your momentum. In theory, every successful television show or community of users is a potential social network, but in reality, the translation process does not always take hold. In this session we will explore what it takes to create and maintain a successful social network and user generated media site.

Janet Eden-Harris, Vice President, J.D. Power and Associates
Mark Dawson, VP, Programming Services, ActiveVideo Networks
Tom Gerace, Founder and CEO of Gather.com
Rebecca Weeks, Director, Business Development, Real Girls Media
Adrian Sexton, Co-Founder & CEO, New Medici LLC
Seth Shapiro, Principal, New Amsterdam Media
Reena A Jadhav, Founder, CEO, Nuresume, Moderator