2008 Will Be The Year of Business Networking

Written by Bernard Lunn / December 3, 2007 / 5 comments

In this post we will give you three reasons for that prediction, plus six specific predictions and one interesting dark horse. First, the three reasons why 2008 will be the year of Business Networking:

1. The US consumer economy will slow (maybe into Recession). Specifically this will weaken business models based on consumer advertising. Advertisers, entrepeneurs and investors will switch their attention to B2B.

2. Consumer-focussed Web 2.0 start-ups are in a “digestion phase“. We don’t really need more innovation. We want innovation, its fun and interesting, but what we need is monetization of existing innovation. Entrepreneurs will turn to the quicker monetization options within B2B.

3. Advertisers (and the media that serve them) will seek increasing diversification from 'faith based advertising' (aka CPM); and business markets will offer better options for subscription and transactional models. There is room for 'quick payback innovation' in this area.

Now for the six specific predictions about Business Networking:

1. There will be a globalization roll-up. There are business networks in Germany (Xing) and France (Viadeo) where LinkedIn does not play well, for simple language reasons. The same may be true in other non-English speaking markets (if not, the land grab is still open folks!). The globalization roll-up will be driven by two facts:: a) switching cost is high in practice - ask a German to switch to LinkedIn or an American to switch to Xing to find out why; b) there is tremedous business value in building business contacts internationally, so the network that can make that happen will do very well.

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