RE: segmentation for social networking

There have been a few messages on the list about community segmentation.

Most recently, in his message about metadata we capture [for Action 20, I
believe] Ron suggested three categories of communities: Business,
Entertainment, Mobile. 

I use two different approaches to segmentation. 

The first is on the basis of the human needs which a community service
addresses (in Ron's suggested segmentation there are two: business and
entertainment). In January 2008, I suggested 7 community types on the basis
of human needs: Friending, Entertainment, Productivity (business), Fame,
Causes, Social Shopping and Competition (Games). 

The second segmentation I believe would be useful is on the basis of
technology complexity. I also suggested 7 different complexity levels. 

For more information about my proposals on segmentation, please see [1].
These are just suggested ways of performing segmentation. We need a
segmentation system which can be consistently used and widely-accepted.
Having no segmentation (current situation), makes it difficult to understand
trends, compare services and measure market size, etc.

[1]
http://www.w3.org/2008/09/msnws/papers/Social_Networking_Segmentation.pdf 

Christine 
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cperey@perey.com 
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