Ryan MacMillan

I was assigned the task of exploring which emerging social networks would be big in 2009. There was definitely a mixed response ranging from ‘that’s an incredible idea’ to ‘I don’t get it’. Take a look at our findings and judge for yourself.

1. Cake Financial: Easy to use interface with some good visual tools e.g. traffic light system to indicate how ’risky’ your portfolio is and an A-E grading system to illustrate how well particular stocks are performing. A few people did however comment that it is slightly limited in terms of the number of brokers that your information can be pulled in from and currently very American centric. It will be interesting to keep an eye on this over the next 12 months to see if this expands outside of the US.

2. Lending Club: In these times of credit crunch, this is a fabulous idea, however it was felt that this is still a pretty risky option. Despite clever credit ratings being applied to both borrowers and lenders, it was generally felt that it would still be a slight leap of faith to invest in a mystery lender via the internet.

3. Changents: Although universally agreed that this was a great idea, it was generally felt that the design of this site made it difficult to ascertain what the purpose of the network was. It was felt that there were other similar networks which were more accessible, however if you manage to find individual action stories these gave a great personal overview of each cause.

4. Horses Mouth: Great idea but not very popular with this particular laptopdance audience. It was generally felt by our group that they didn’t have enough time to invest in a network like this. Some did however say that although they didn’t feel the site was relevant to them, their children, sister/brother, parent might find it useful.

5. Pitch Hero: Surprisingly this one was not as popular as we expected. I spoke to several sports fans, but they just didn’t feel that this was a network they’d make the effort to engage with and that the site was even perhaps a little gimmicky. It would however be interesting to take a similar poll with people who play football as well as watch it, for whom this network might be of more interest.

6. LinkedIn Apps: This was definitely one of the most talked about network updates for my category. A very mixed response – some feeling that the new apps were cluttered distraction from what is otherwise a very clean, useful networking tool and others feeling that the functionality of some of the apps would be really useful when working remotely e.g. Box.net.

7. Gyminee: Definitely one for the dedicated fitness fanatic only! Tonnes of functionality including exchanging work outs and daily diet tracking. Generally felt like a bit of overkill although some great ideas about being able to hook this up to your treadmill rather than having to manually record your workouts.

8. Igniter: This was popular with most people I spoke to, especially the dating potential of groups of people meeting up. In summary, lots of fun but will need to be have a bit more substance to really take off.

9. Patients Like Me: A personal favorite of mine and received mostly positive responses. In particular the database of drugs with associated community reviews was impressive, although we did discuss the potential the legal aspects in terms of user’s potentially receiving bad advice. It will be an interesting one to watch.