"Social Rank" will bring a new wave of disruptive web companies

Very successful web companies were created in the  early days of search when Google perfected the page rank algorithm, amassed huge traffic as the start page for an internet journey, and then directed this traffic to sites that ranked high.  These sites (primarily content related) were easily readable by google, had unique/original content, and were first movers – they generated 10s of millions of visits per month from google.   Multi hundred million dollar revenue companies like About.com and TripAdvisor were formed with very little marketing cost – making them very profitable (we’re talking 40-50% EBITDA margins).    Other hot companies such as Yelp, Fixya and even Wikipedia can attribute early mover in “SEO” as a key success factor.

We are now in a new era of social media where I believe Facebook will have similar “kingmaking” power and will result in a whole new crop of vertical sites that are socially driven.  Why?  Now over 500M people have exposed their digital identity and social graph via facebook for the rest of the web to use.  This will only grow to billions as it will be a requirement to have “digital identity” in order to be seen, heard, and transact in the real world – and facebook seems to be the platform of choice globally (I will leave it to the pundits on whether it will be an open platform or remain closed).   The recent product enhancements of facebook allow their “social widgets/signals” to be embedded all over the web to provide the hooks for these new sites to get weaved into the social graph and also appear high in facebook’s “social rank”.  As facebook will enter the search space, this will be even more powerful. The difference vs Google’s page rank is that the important sites and web pages are determined by real people, their actions, and the strength of their connections.   This will drive not only a key aspect of search (better answers to research-related vs navigational queries) but also enable “discovery” of new content – when a consumer isn’t sure what they want, they will get socially driven recommendations at sites that cater to the verticals (e.g. travel, entertainment, shopping).   Most verticals will be impacted and many new companies will be created that drive tremendous free traffic from facebook feeds, embeds, comments, links, etc.  This is what Zuckerberg wants – to be the new nexus of information and applications all across the web (and mobile).

I’m particularly interested in funding companies in high value verticals that will take a 100% social approach from ground up.  Yes, some web 1.0 companies will rank well due to their brand and quality of content (e.g. New York Times, CNN) and because they will integrate social widgets but there will be many other new brands created – in Travel, Real Estate, Education, Finance, and Shopping (just to name a few) that are solely focused on being the best nodes on the social graph.

If you’ve got a company that you believe will take advantage if this new disruption, I want to hear from you!

Comments

[Jay]

Raj, what do you think Facebook will do in the search space? I understand Bing just released "social search" of Facebook status updates and Twitter posts, but I wonder if there's an opportunity to build a search engine that finds and orders destination websites using SocialRank instead of PageRank. Is this something Facebook is working on?

[Raj]

I think facebook will likely launch search - they already have a search input but its primarily for people. Mark Z claimed at the D8 conference they are getting search queries on an order of magnitude of google already.

[Jeremy]

It is the virality, Zynga became successful compared to Slide, because they worked hard and built deeper engagement. I think you are making it sound more complicated than what it is, facebook sexy term for virality is social graph. Moral of the story fb is no panacea, one has to earn it if you look at zynga and slide.

[nursing tops]

This is what Zuckerberg wants – to be the new nexus of information and applications all across the web

[Rick Ong]

Interesting observation. If this happens, search relevancy factors would be socially driven. Great post!

[handbag wholesalers]

This looks absolutely perfect. All these tinny details are made with lot of background knowledge. I like it a lot. This was a useful post and I think it is rather easy to see from the other comments as well that this post is well written and useful.
20101231pilipalagaga

[Jordan Big Fund]

Love,love love this post!O(∩_∩)O~

[Viagra]

This is what Zuckerberg wants – to be the new nexus of information and applications all across the web (and mobile).

[Mark Lee]

Great post! This is the first time I am visiting your site… Its cool and I like your template. More over, the quality of your posts are just awesome! You really put a lot of effort into it, Don’t you?

[buy zithromax]

Thanks mate... just dropped by. Will look for BIKE STN when we get to Seattle. Still in Buenos Airies.

[breast implants arizona]

Anyone wants money, some are not that honest sometimes.

[generic viagra]

Wow, nice post,there are many person searching about that now they will find enough resources by your post

[апор]

апроапро

[kamagra]

Hi there, nice information provided. thanks for that. keep posting of blogs in the future. thanks once again...

[pymnsoumemy]

Thank you! I didn't know they picked up on it until I saw your comment.

[scoumursowemn]

Thanks for the nice blog. It was very useful for me. Keep sharing such ideas in the future as well. This was actually what I was looking for, and I am glad to came here! Thanks for sharing the such information with us.

[scoumursowemn]

Wow, nice post,there are many person searching about that now they will find enough resources by your post

[meerlyOmild]

That was an interesting piece of information on handwriting analysis. Please post more about graphology. Thank you!

[paickoribra]

Thank you! I didn't know they picked up on it until I saw your comment.

[Office 2007]

Have you ever felt that Microsoft Office a game needed or lacked a certain element to it?

[Karen Millen Pas Cher]

Karen Millen,Robe Karen Millen,Manteau Karen Millen,Karen Millen Soldes,Robes Karen Millen,Karen Millen Pas Cher

[baby pink nike blazer]

What is love?
Is a wonderful addition: a miss with a miss, 15 will be able to become the moon.
Are an extraordinary hearing: Even across the mountains, but also exciting to hear each other's heartbeat.

[new era fitted caps wholesale]

Summer has not to, wide variety of in the store window into the various listed but the hat, the hat new era caps wholesale might not only keep out the strong sunlight, also has the function of the collocation, even a suitable hat can modify our face, here, let's look at this year chun xia's most popular hat patterns. The hair style is most suitable for wear a hat? In order to prevent bask in, we can use new era hats wholesale the hat blocking sunlight, we always some cases not enough time to do a hair, at this time the girls will think of whether, in a hat for a perfect hairstyle?
The case ZiWen cap has been little women use, but in recent years, with the proliferation of the British wind, cap will gradually be more and more people love. Lovely tidy length hair lookscheap new era caps wholesale very handsome and lively, collocation is a little neuter hat is very masculine of lovely! Dome gentleman cap collocation pear head, was neutral handsome gentleman cap will instead with round, soft breath much a few minutes. This time the same as long as tie-in tenderness pear head, only beautiful romantic feeling is completely out.
Shallow cheap new era hats wholesale top fedora hat in the beginning is the men's patent, now also more and more be women love.

[art picasso]

I as well as my friends were reviewing the nice procedures located on your web site and so all of the sudden developed a horrible feeling I never expressed respect to the blog owner for them.

[art reproductions oil paintings]

Senators under investigation. Those who should protect us, are lying and cheating. This is not how the World should look like…