To illustrate the point made in my last blog post, I'd like to offer some visual representations of the burst in social media adoption within Drupal. To start, here's the usage chart (with outliers corrected) for my Facebook-style Statuses module for Drupal. The figures shown in the chart are estimated to be about half of the actual adoption rate because of the way the figures are collected.
As you can see, the module -- a central one for any social networking site these days, in the model of Facebook, Twitter, and others -- has experienced a steady rate of growth over the past year, going from zero users to well over 1200 (recorded). However, this chart is perhaps a bit misleading because of the scale. A chart that is to scale is more striking:
And that's just the numbers that can be recorded. If we assume the actual adoption rate is twice that, the chart goes almost vertical. That would mean about 7 new sites add this module every day. As social networks can attract some of the largest user-bases of any kind of site, that equates to thousands of people using the "what are you doing?"-style status functionality every day on Drupal.
I'm saying this to point out that most social networking sites on Drupal probably don't even use FBSS, and so the number of new social networking sites on Drupal alone must be growing at an astounding rate. (The total number of new Drupal sites each day over the last year has been about 375.) This puts pressure on the Drupal contrib development community to make sure the social networking tools that modern sites need are available and stable--and so far, we've done a fair job at that I think. It also means that everyone who builds, maintains, or is thinking of building a social networking site should be confident that they are on the right track, but that they also need to continue innovating and making sure that they are fulfilling the needs of their audiences. And it means that any business who hasn't considered making the social networking leap should do so soon or risk falling behind like the newspaper industry.
To further illustrate the importance of social networking, I'd like to draw your attention to this short video pointed out by Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal:
If you're not convinced yet, just consider the emphasis cutting-edge companies like Facebook and Google (and somewhat less cutting-edge companies like Microsoft and Yahoo!) are putting into new initiatives which seem to be aimed at real-time searching, especially of social media data: Facebook recently acquired real-time social media searching master Friendfeed, Google is developing a new, faster, supposedly real-time search engine, and Yahoo! agreed to share their search technology with Microsoft in exchange for using Microsoft's new, faster, better search engine, Bing. These big companies with panels of analysts to help with foresight are already on the social networking game; with Drupal, you can do it too.
August 28, 2009 - 5:14PM
I missed this post and just happened across it...
Social networking is definitely big. It seems to be exploding all over the place. Unfortunately, Drupal is falling behind. I've been working on Drupal SN for 3 years and it's always been a game of catchup. That's getting worse. There's many options for out of the box SN these days that may not be as powerful and flexible as Drupal but they are quick and easy and they work.
I love Drupal and will continue to use it for my SN site, but I must admit I'm envious of those who just set up a premade package and go. If I was in this as a business, I'd be exploring other options. Ironically, it's business that could save us. If some big companies with deep pockets decided to push Drupal SN and, most importantly, give back to the community, Drupal could really rock. As it is, though, with just us volunteers working on different pieces of the puzzle and leaving it up to the end user to put it all together... Well, frankly, I'm worried.
Michelle
August 30, 2009 - 4:41PM
Michelle, I think it's fair to say that Drupal is not currently positioned to be in the lead in the Social Networking market. There's just too much really advanced technology that goes into making a website, and social networking with Drupal relies too much on the contributions of a few people who can only work on these things in their free time, as you point out. However, there are very few better options out there that are also free. The ones that are, like Ning, generally don't offer the same kind of flexibility and advanced tweaking that Drupal can if your knowledge is extensive enough to take advantage of it. To me, it's really those little things that can make a social networking website stand out above the crowd and make it different from the cookie-cutter websites out there. In much the same way that WordPress offers a lot of control for blogs despite all the competition from services like Blogger, Drupal offers a lot of control for SN sites despite all the competition from services like Ning. As you say, if businesses recognize this and get more involved in Drupal SN, it will bring more time and money to the cause and push Drupal to the front. But either way, I think SN is an area where Drupal could really shine given the attention it deserves, and I think developers in both core and contrib should keep a mind to that going forward.
September 4, 2009 - 12:51PM
I think, though, that social networking is one area that "cookie cutter" works. While, of course, some innovation is needed or we never move forward, there is a lot of copying and consolodation in the SN world. Facebook is becoming more like Twitter, for example.
When you are making a website where you or a known group of contributors control the content, you can experiment and be bold. When you're dealing with just average, possibly barely computer literate folks, making your site work just like the ones they are used to is a big bonus. Facebook may not be the epitome of website design, but it's what hundreds of millions of people use and are used to. If you want folks to use your "Joe Blow's SN" site, then you need to give the users what they expect or they aren't going to stick around.
My goal isn't to clone Facebook. They are way better at being Facebook than I ever will be. But I plan to cram as much of Facebook's functionality into Coulee Region Online as I can and hope I can get the attention of a tiny sliver of their userbase that happens to live in the same area as me. :)
Michelle
September 5, 2009 - 11:04AM
I disagree. Prominent social networks have pioneered features like the "wall" and "feed" that users expect to see on a site that considers itself a "social network." Other features, particularly groups and forum-style conversations, are also common. However, the implementation of these features - that is, their usability and the extent to which they are tailored to the intended audience - can make a huge difference in attracting users to a site. Also, having something unusual but engaging, for example a rating system or (like I have on BabelUp) a political affiliation spectrum can draw users in as well.
Another thing to consider is that Drupal can allow different sections of the site to look different, or even be on different subdomains. This can allow for a more fluid, intuitive interface as long as the basic elements of the theme are retained in each section; and it's something that few cookie-cutter solutions allow.
In addition, Drupal gives you complete control over what's displayed, so you don't have to end up with awkward explanatory text that wasn't really meant for what your site is trying to do, and you can hide fields on the node/add form if you want to, and you can add whatever information is relevant to your users in an Author Pane next to their posts... point being, the little things count too. Most people couldn't build a Drupal site that would function as well as Facebook, but if you have a certain level of Drupal expertise, it's not terribly hard to build a SN site on Drupal that's better than what you could build with similar goals on Ning (for example).
Now, you do have to have a certain level of Drupal expertise. That's an area that needs to improve in contrib. Hopefully as we move forward into Drupal 7, leading modules in the areas of media handling will emerge with simple interfaces, and more modules will start to interact smoothly with each other -- but if you want to build something complicated and better than cookie-cutter, there's always going to be some level of difficulty, particularly in the little things. I think in general, Drupal handles those little things better than most comparable solutions.
November 17, 2009 - 10:42PM
To some of the comments above: Remember, Drupal is a "framework" and therefore ment to act as a starting point to build a stable and secure base for what you need. Its not intended to be an out of the box solution for anything specific. If it was, it would go against the grain of its own premise.
I personally think its a pretty great platform. Yeah you gotta make some stuff work how you want it to, but compared to almost all other [open source] CM* solutions out there, its wayyyyyyyyy ahead of the game. Im not too sure what these other platforms you are talking about can do, but it cant be too much more than Drupal with certain key modules like og, relationships, notifications, views, panels, rules, token, etcetcetc. Because of these, I wouldnt even consider using wordpress or joomla for a serious community site. Plone is pretty sweet, but python is a different animal, and you need to run zope.
I am currently designing a social networking site with some pretty advanced features. Drupal is able to keep up almost every step of the way. Where its not, i am able to build it or modify a module to provide it.
December 10, 2009 - 12:26AM
dhaupin, my technical skills have made that my experience with Drupal as well. I find Drupal easier to customize -- and thus easier to make complex social networking sites with -- than any other solution. I do admit, however, that it is currently unrealistic to expect most of the people and companies who want social networks to have the ability to set one up in Drupal. For those in such a situation, out-of-the-box solutions like Ning are a better way to go. (I strongly believe that Joomla! and Wordpress, on the other hand, are not the way to go for almost any social networking use, unless you're under time constraints and more familiar with Joomla! than Drupal. And I've worked with all three.)
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