B2B social networking - has LinkedIn locked out the competition?
Friday, May 28, 2010 at 10:22AM 
There's no doubting the success of social media in the consumer space - Facebook and Twitter have shown there is a demand for this type of networking (how sustainable Facebook is in the light of recent privacy concerns is another matter). However, translating this success to the business world is another matter. Certainly some businesses are finding Facebook and Twitter a great way to market to consumers but, with the notable exception of LinkedIn, attempts to replicate Facebook in a B2B setting do not seem to have worked. I've been looking at 2 UK attempts in this space, BT Tradespace and TalkBizNow.
BT Tradespace was launched in 2007 to provide a platform for SMEs to promote themselves online and to sell their products and services. As of today there appears to be 36,455 companies listed on the site, although some of the companies seem to have multiple entries so the actual number of companies will be less. Out of a total of pool of over 4 million SMEs in the UK this represents less than 1%. Obviously the activity that takes place on the site is most important but I get the impression that this activity is declining. Forum questions by members about issues with the site remain unanswered even after several days and discussions in the "lounge" area rarely extend beyond self-promotion of members' companies. There does not seem to be a sense of community or of any meaningful discussions taking place. Looking at one of the promotional videos made by Tradespace, the main benefit of joining seems to be to improve the search engine optimisation (SEO) of members' web sites through linking.
Similarly, TalkBizNow which was launched a couple of years ago does not seem to have generated any critical mass and looks relatively dormant as a place for businesses to meet online. Finding one of their "groups" with more than one member is quite difficult. Scrolling through the list of 13 members which came up after a search for "consulting", none of them had joined any groups and the level of detail they had posted about themselves made it difficult to see why anyone would want to contact them.
In the winner-take-all world of social networks perhaps LinkedIn has won this battle. The network effect encourages people to join the network that has the most members and LinkedIn certainly has the most members for this type of network. LinkedIn Groups has helped the service move beyond being just a place to find a contact in a specific organisation and introduced the social element that had been missing.
I welcome any comments that prove me wrong on this and show other B2B networks in the UK or elsewhere that are succeeding or which contradict my views on Tradespace and TalkBizNow.
b2b, social media 
Reader Comments (4)
I'm watching Yammer at the moment. The idea is walled-garden twitter for a company, but they have a community option so companies can link with partners etc. See; https://www.yammer.com/brighton.ac.uk/related_networks It's early days here too, but I think getting twitter right in a business context could be game changing.
Looks interesting - I just joined the Yammer network for Brighton Uni. I agree that there could be something in this. It would be good if it works within a Twitter client like Tweetdeck so you can monitor all activity in one place.
Thanks for sharing what you discovered. Often people sign up to these networks and just forget about it. After all, we're all busy professionals. However, it's a sad statement that both these services seem to be aggregating all the busy professionals in one place.
Linkedin is proving to be the better resource based on its size and groups. However, many do fall into the same trap - lurking and just reading their weekly updates (if they even get that) and not spending time interacting. B2B has to avoid falling into the same syndrome.
Like to share with you mytradezone.com which is a business to business social networking and lead generation site. The key difference for myTradeZone is that a business can post their products, services, requests for quotes, and their profile. And they have a dashboard to check their leads, and even follow other companies, and share news with specific groups of followers. Beta version is available now, full version to be released soon.