Joshua Porter posted a great article yesterday on Bokardo called “Sermo a sign of a larger trend toward specialized social networks“. In the post, Joshua says:

Sermo is a sign of a larger trend: the move to smaller, more specialized social networks that have custom tools to support a unique activity and may cater to a private or exclusive set of users. In this case it is sharing medical information among verified doctors.

I’ve blogged about Sermo in the past. I love what they are doing—creating an exclusive social network for physicians so that they can discuss medical issues long before they hit the journals (and are likely more candid than journals). Of course, they are raising a little hell as the pharmaceutical companies can no longer control their messages delivered to each physician. They are (gasp) talking to each other.

If it is possible to have a crush on a company, you know I’m in love with PatientsLikeMe. I left a comment about them on Josh’s blog, so I’ll just repeat myself:

On the other side of the medical spectrum, I’ve spoken with a few folks from Boston-based PatientsLikeMe, another example of a specialized social network. They are a network for the patients. I love that instead of Amazon’s “customers who bought this also bought this…” intelligence, they have “patients at the exact same stage of ALS as you who are experiencing these symptoms that you are have taken these medications and felt these side effects.”

Ridiculously amazing.

The market of “just because” social networks is now bloated. In order to take off you’re going to need one of these specialized networks that offers something nobody else can. One key to that can be taking detailed profile data and using it to help foster your users’ social interactions (like PatientsLikeMe, and others such as last.fm).

Damn, reading that back, it sounds good. You can tell I love this idea. I recently joined Facebook. I yawned about it here. All I’ve done with it is insert widgets into my profile of specialized networks I have elsewhere (last.fm, Flickr, Twitter) and add friends that I have elsewhere. I find Facebook doesn’t really do anything more than my personal blog already does—act as an aggregator for all this information.

So, these specialized networks—last.fm (for tracking my music listening habits), del.icio.us (for storing my bookmarks), Flickr (for storing my photos), Twitter (for microblogging, public IM, whatever the hell you wanna call it), etc.—offer a hell of a lot more value than the “aggregator” social networks. You can easily hop to another aggregator (or create your own) and add the specialized content to that new profile. You still need the specialized services, but the Facebooks and MySpaces become expendable.

Then there’s OpenID and portable social networks (via Oberkirch). Once these reach their enormous potential, what really is the purpose of Facebook or MySpace?

I was recently speaking with Jeff Cole from a PatientsLikeMe, a company that is creating a community site for patients of life-altering diseases. Patients use the site to track their progress dealing with the disease. One question that eventually needs to come up with is pretty morbid, but real. What happens when these users pass away?

This is something that Eons, former Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor’s new company, is also going to be dealing with. Eons is a social networking site for users aged 50 and above. So, while one company is going to have to deal with users passing away from horrible diseases, another has to deal with the inevitable because of advanced age.

So, what should the sites do with these rich profiles of information? Honestly, I think the profiles need to stay online. But denote that this person is no longer with us. The pages become an online tribute to that person.

Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte’s wonderful new podcast, Net@Nite, covered a related site in their second episode. The site, MyDeathSpace, is a repository of MySpace pages of deceased users. For example, in October 18-year old Jordan Scudder was killed in an auto accident. If you visit his MySpace page, you see that it now has become a repository for remembrance messages. For example:

hi jordan, i really miss you. i still would like it if you would come home, everyday it gets harder and harder, i hear it is suppose to get easier but….. your my boy, what can i say. i keep looking at all the pictures of when you kids were little and i’d like for you to see them too, some of them would make you laugh. i also, found the video of when *you, dad and kristin* when on that swing in kissimmee, of course you had to fix your hair before you were even off the ride. hahaha. i really do love and miss you so much, ( more than words can say). forever, your mom

Messages like these will always be there to remember Jordan. I think the multitude of social networking sites out there can learn a lot from this. Keep it there. Remember the past users.

Now, a stickier situation is blogs. What happens if a blogger passes away? Eventually, the hosting costs won’t be getting paid. The hosting company will likely shut the blog down. But then all of the data is lost. Should hosting companies have some sort of responsibility to check and see what’s up before shutting a site down? How good are the backups they keep (if a family member contacts them after the fact to explain the situation)?

The blog is the new diary, and the number of blogs out there is only going to increase. This is going to become an issue at some point, and I’m curious how hosting companies will deal with it.

Most of what you have heard about MySpace may have come from the news. It’s all the rage with the kids these days and many of them are using it to misbehave. But the premise of the site is wonderfully inventive. You set up a page. You say what you like. You link to your friends’ pages. They leave comments. it’s social networking at its most basic and at its best. Just out of curiosity, I hopped on it while blogging this and right now I’m listening to killer music by my ex-girlfriend’s brother’s band.

Speaking of sites that have sparked controversy, YouTube is also listed in the Newsweek article. YouTube allows users to upload videos. Then they are tagged and linked very similarly to how Flickr photos are. Where YouTube has gotten into a bit of trouble is when users post TV shows and other copyrighted materials. A new site-imposed ten minute video clip limit is a first step at keeping the networks happy.

A few other sites are mentioned, but these two are heavy-hitters that I wanted to add to my list of sites that have succeeded with the new business model.