The 3rd-Party Era: Profiting from Facebook, Twitter and others.

Thought we should begin this week with a creative spice. Are you ready?

Social Networking, they say is an already old idea – it’s yesterday’s thought. This implies that anyone thinking of building a social networking site like facebook today is already a loser. While I do not fully agree with that, I must also express that there is still an opportunity to profit from the revolution. Hence, this post.

It’s certain that “Social” is one of the top reasons people go online. Everyday, folks are either making a new friends (like I did yesterday), sending a message to an old friend, tweeting friends or simply checking out the profiles of people they’ll like to connect with. It is therefore important to note that there’s still a way to make money out of Social Networking (or Social Media generally) without setting up a site like Facebook.

How?

The Easy Route

Make it easier for people/businesses to be social. In my own opinion, people are always looking for the easiest way to get on Facebook, twitter and the likes. Several applications have been developed and people are getting interested in more ways to get on these platforms easily. For instance, how can you help an individual without a smartphone and a PC get

on facebook easily. Perhaps, a paid (cheap, though) SMS service that’ll allow people receive, send, comment and like a facebook post will not be a bad idea for this type of people. Just think. Over the past few weeks, I have found myself switching between numerous apps (Seesmic, Tweet Deck, MetroTwit, RockMelt and many others) in order to stay active on the Social Media platforms I belong to. This is due to one reason – I am in search of the easiest way to stay connected. Simple! So, I will stick with any software (and even pay for it)
that affords me the easiest way to connect. Think Easy! If you can build/facilitate a service/app that will make it easier for people to stay connected Facebook, Twitter and others, you may be smiling to the bank soon.

The Fun Route

I cannot over emphasize this *mehn*. Social Media should be fun. To me, Facebook is now getting boring (may be it’s my friends). We need a third party app/service that will spice up the fun juice in there. Err, I haven’t carefully thought about how this should be structured, but I know it’s possible. Even the facebook team themselves are constantly searching for new ways to make Facebook fun to use. Hence the new services they’ve been rolling out in recent times. I can say it over and over again, Social Media is fun. Can you build an app/service that will make Facebook, Twitter and the likes fun to use by people? You may also soon be on your way to the bank.

Fun + Easy

You may also want to consider the following the fun and easy route. Only a few words to say on this point. All you have to do is combine both the Fun route with the Easy route and your app/service may just be the next big thing.

The Effectiveness Route

This will be more for professionals and companies. You see, companies and various professionals are now curious about how well they are doing on Socially (Online, of course) and are also ready to do better. A service like Klout helps measure a brand’s influence across the social media platforms while a tool like Social Bro helps analyze your twitter community in real-time. There are a few more tools in this area, just to mention two. Don’t you think people want to know who just unfollowed them on twitter? (Yes, people are crazy about this). Many of the twitter apps around are too basic for professionals. They want something more. While there are tons of these types of tools for twitter already, there are only a few out there for Facebook, think up something. Build something for the professional. By professional here, I mean anyone/company who wants to increase his/her reach beyond already known friends.

Now, consider what the following apps/sites/services that are doing something similar to my points here so you can take a clue from them:

• EmpireAvenue
• Naira Tweets
• Klout
• TweetDeck (Err, now bought by Twitter itself)
• MetroTwit
• Tribrr
• Social Bro
• Seesmic

No doubt, the above apps/services are one of the factors that makes all of the Social Media platforms we have today much fun to use (at least for me).

So, put on your thinking cap NOW! You can still profit from this growing sector of third party services. Well, you won’t accuse me of not telling you.

NOTE: While planning your app/third-party service, think profitability and monetization, or at least Survival if you don’t want to make profit from it. If not, you may not stay  too long in the business.