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Friday, July 31, 2009

Watch Out Linked In, Plaxo, WSJ WantsTo Create Another Social Network


Linked In, Plaxo, and others have been cheered as great sites for job seekers and business relationship builders. They provide an address book to keep in touch and opportunity to broadcast your latest and greatest news, and the chance to feel connected without actually calling each other constantly. I have found some of these sites to be very useful. Well it seems the Wall Street Journal wants a piece of this action. "They’ve been working on a new social network, to be called WSJ Connect, we’ve confirmed. And instead of building it internally, like they did with WSJ Community, they’ve enlisted the help of another arm of parent company News Corp."

Is there room for another player in the field? Sometimes I feel I am on too many social sites and I need to cut back. Still, if someone builds a better mousetrap, consumers will switch. This continues to prove itself out across every type of business. It is why internet access through Prodigy lost to AOL which has lost to cable broadband. There are tons of examples. So how will the WSJ build a better social network site and will consumers embrace it. Linked In, to me is the leader and they should here the wake up call. Continue to innovate or risk being swept aside by newer, faster, better.