Application Integration with Social Networks

A former colleague of mine called yesterday to talk about a new idea being proposed by Ringside Networks.

These guys were the power behind Bluestone and JBOSS. My friend's thinking is that these chaps are two for two and if they think this is a good thing to invest in then it is worth a close look.

It certainly is a cool idea. They have come up with an application engine, the Ringside Social Application Server, that is designed to add a social context to a web application. The idea is to make your web site more of a community thing. So, for example (taken from Ringside's web site), if you sold running shoes then you could provide functions for your sites users to organize and take part in events or find a training partners of similar skill & experience in the same area.

It strikes me as a new concept in sales & marketing. Social networking sites represent a new way to reach a large group of people who are actually interested in your products or services and will come to you.

Ringside estimate that there are 67 million users of social network sites and that advertising from search engines can only take you so far. They propose that the smart companies will leverage social networking for more targeted marketing. They also estimate that there are approximately 19,000 applications leveraging the Facebook API alone.

The key fact about this new push for an open source social networks application server that strikes a chord with me is that the idea came from a real, business driven need. The original authors were paid to create a social context for the running shoe company described in the example above. They then set about creating a more generic engine that could be quickly implemented for anyone else.

What would turn me off would be to hear that someone dreamed it up and decided to make it. I am not a fan of "build it and they will come". I much prefer to see that an idea has real business value. The fact that someone has already been paying for services to implement this idea tells me that it does.

The next thing to discover is whether or not there is value in integrating these applications with back end systems be they legacy or contemporary. With our ability to expose legacy business functions as services, for example as web services, and a range of options for communications (HTTPS, JMS, etc) it should be easy to integrate with the Ringside Social Networks Application Server.

James
Charlotte, NC
June 2008