ROADMAP FOR SELECTING A SOCIAL NETWORKING

PLATFORM

You’re in the market for a social networking solution to engage your customer base – you’re experimenting with Facebook, but find the functionality to rigid for your needs. You’re looking at vendors who license and support the software you require. But, you should take a step back – this may be the wrong approach, especially if you have not worked through your social requirements. Developing requirements, establishing goals and creating an execution strategy should be done before the selection of your technology platform. The selection of the technology should always be done last. Why?

August 2014

Best Practices for Selecting a Social Networking Platform

Lexington

eBusiness

Consulting

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ContentsSocial Requirements, Goals and Strategy.......................................................................................3

Platform Selection (Technology).....................................................................................................4

Social Networking Platform Overview............................................................................................4

Social Networking Platform Administration....................................................................................4

Social Networking Platform Functionality.......................................................................................4

Terms and Conditions.....................................................................................................................5

High-Level Platform Architecture...................................................................................................5

Infrastructure and Application Architecture...................................................................................5

Software Development Tools.........................................................................................................6

Data Architecture...........................................................................................................................6

Network Requirements..................................................................................................................6

Security Support.............................................................................................................................6

Integration Support........................................................................................................................7

General Administration Functionality.............................................................................................7

Monitor & Moderate User Activity.................................................................................................7

User Administration and Management..........................................................................................7

Site Metrics and Reporting.............................................................................................................8

Customer Analytics.........................................................................................................................8

High-Level Functionality.................................................................................................................8

Profiles and User Experience..........................................................................................................9

Content Management Systems (CMS)............................................................................................9

User Generated Content.................................................................................................................9

Search, Navigation & Taxonomy...................................................................................................10

Polls & Ratings..............................................................................................................................10

Lead Generation...........................................................................................................................10

Collaboration - Social Graphing and Relation Controls.................................................................10

Collaboration - Conferencing........................................................................................................10

Workflow / Business Process........................................................................................................11

Other Social Eco-Systems.............................................................................................................11

Terms and Conditions...................................................................................................................11

Licensing and Pricing....................................................................................................................11

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Roadmap......................................................................................................................................11

Top Social Networking Vendors....................................................................................................12

Selecting a Social Networking Platform

So, you’re in the market for a social networking solution to engage your customer base – you’re experimenting with Facebook, but find the functionality to rigid for your needs. You’re looking at vendors who license and support the software you require. But, you should take a step back – this may be the wrong approach, especially if you have not worked through your social requirements. Developing requirements, establishing goals and creating an execution strategy should be done before the selection of your technology platform. The selection of the technology should always be done last. Why? One good example; the functionality for internal social platforms differs from external facing platforms. For example, collaboration modules are commonly found in in-facing platforms, and not in out-facing platforms.

Social Requirements, Goals and Strategy

To start you need to define your objectives for the software platform. You will need to answer these questions and more?

1. What are the social requirements for the community? 2. What is the demographic profile of your user base? 3. Is the community in-facing (for employees), out-facing (for users) or both?4. Do you bring the platform in-house, or do you want it hosted by 3rd party?5. What do you want your users to do while engaged? 6. What is your social communications strategy? Will Blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn

and Facebook be part of the eco-system? 7. What topical content needs to be developed for the community? Will the

community require premium content, or will it be all user-generated?8. What are the goals of the community, what do you want to accomplish?

a. Is it to offer customer support or provide consumer education?b. Enable user networking to generate new business?c. Enable product information sharing to increase branding?d. Enable collaboration on new product development?e. Identifying expertise for the community?f. Listen to what customers are saying about your products and company?

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There are many more questions to be asked, and task to be performed prior to selecting a platform. The point here is the answers to these questions will dictate your technology choices.

Platform Selection (Technology)

Once you have a clear demographic profile of your customers, and have completed the requirements for community, strategy, content and tools – you then can focus upon the selection process to identify the best software platform that most closely support your requirements.

There are many technical decisions to be made. For example, is an open source platforms an option? Do you have the technical and editorial resources to deploy and manage the platform internally? What are your moderation requirements – will you do the moderating, or do you out-source it to a 3rd party?

To this end, we have developed a series of 135 questions, in 26 topical categories, in 4 sections to ask your vendor when you are evaluating social networking platforms. These can be included in a RFP so you can compare a point-by-point comparison during your evaluation and selection process. The 4 sections include the following 26 categories:

Social Networking Platform Overview

1. High-Level Platform Architecture2. Infrastructure and Application Architecture3. Software Development Tools4. Data Architecture5. Network Requirements6. Security Support7. Integration Support

Social Networking Platform Administration

1. General Administration Functionality2. Monitor & Moderate User Activity3. User Administration and Management4. Site Metrics and Reporting5. Customer Analytics

Social Networking Platform Functionality

1. High-Level Functionality

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2. Profiles and User Experience3. Content ManagementSystems4. User Generated Content5. Search, Taxonomy & Navigation6. Polls & Ratings7. Lead Generation8. Collaboration - Social Graphing and Relation Controls9. Collaboration - Conferencing10. Workflow / Business Process11. Social Network Platforms

Terms and Conditions

1. Terms and Conditions2. Licensing and Pricing3. Roadmap

Social Networking Platform Overview

High-Level Platform Architecture

1. Demonstrate the overall architecture for your platform.2. Show how your UI using style sheets can be adapted to my

look and feel. 3. Are there any client-side software or plug-in requirements?4. Specify cross-browser compatibility support requirements. 5. Discuss your strategy and support for mobile devices.6. Describe your security and configurations processes.7. Describe your support for streaming rich media.8. Describe your tools for uploading and downloading content.9. Describe your support for service-oriented architecture (API & SDK)10. Do your products adhere to industry standards?

Infrastructure and Application Architecture

1. Discuss the execution environment for the operating systems (OS), application servers, database and hardware.

2. Explain the application architecture for your software.3. Describe any 3rd Party or Open Source software that is used in your platform.4. Do you support any Content Delivery Network providers?5. Explain how the platform, and how the major individual modules scale.

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6. Explain technical implications for a hosted vs. internal deployment.7. Describe the company’s software release cycle strategy.

Software Development Tools

1. Are Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and editing tools (WYSIWYG) available to support the creation and publishing of content?

2. Are SDKs, APIs and toolkits available to enhance functionality?3. Describe the types of custom enhancements can be developed for your system. 4. How are new modules implemented, and what is a typical timeframe for custom

development?5. Describe the support available to software developers when creating

enhancements?6. What programming skills do we require for the development environment?

Data Architecture

1. Explain the complete information lifecycle to include how data is managed and stored.

2. Explain how structured and unstructured data is managed.3. Understand if different databases stores are used for different content types.4. Describe your strategy for managing content types and formats (i.e. Audio -

mp3).5. Understand data storage scale requirements based on X growth.6. Does the platform set any restrictions on the directory structure, and data

formats that are used to store information?7. Explain your data migration strategy to move the service from a hosted to

internal deployment.

Network Requirements

1. Describe your system deployment topology and processing tiers. Is there support for geographic load balancing?

2. Are Content Delivery Networks (CDN) used to optimize performance? 3. Is wireless access by users and monitors supported?

Security Support

1. Describe the end-to-end security controls in your software.2. What security schemes are supported to handle user authorization?3. Describe security authorization functionality of your system. 4. Describe the privacy settings supported by your system.5. Explain how community moderators control user access to the content or tools. 6. Describe strategy for denial of service attacks.

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7. Do you support any Single-Sign-On schemes such as Open ID, Windows LiveID, Yahoo ID, Facebook Connects?

8. Do you support any Identity Management Systems?

Integration Support

1. Describe integration support for existing Content Management Systems.2. Explain any interaction support with other social (including content) sites such as

Twitter, Google Maps, Foursquare and Facebook.3. Do APIs exist to extend the integration to other social networking platforms?4. Describe how you integrate with major Web 2.0 developer modules.5. Does your system support telephony? 6. Describe how content is delivered to external mobile devices or Windows/Mac

based clients?

Social Networking Platform Administration

General Administration Functionality

1. Describe all major administrative functions of your platform.

2. Describe each required scheduled processes that should run to maintain the system?

3. What administrative services are available through a web-based administration or API interfaces?

4. How are consumer profile information accessed and managed.5. Describe your strategy, and the functionality to support backups and disaster

recovery? 6. Does the system provide support for (native or by API) configuration

management for internal distribution or rollbacks. 7. Describe the capacity planning, auditing and logging capabilities of your

platform.

Monitor & Moderate User Activity

1. Describe the processes and tools used to monitor / moderate real-time user activity.

2. Describe your strategy and tools used to deal with spammers and abusive behavior.

3. Describe the tools that control visibility, participation and messaging.

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4. Describe rules and filter for moderating user generated content (both manual and auto).

5. Describe the skills need by a moderator, how long it takes to train them, and the number of moderators required.

User Administration and Management

1. Describe the security tools and processes required to administer the application, passwords and user information.

2. Does the system manage consumer provisioning (segment users into groups)3. Is there a limit to the number of users that can be part of a community group?4. Can security administration be distributed, using web pages to manage user

accounts?5. Describe your web services strategy for adding, updating and deleting user

accounts and profile information? Is there API support for this?6. Does the platform provide the ability to import or export user account

information from other databases? 7. Describe the security features, procedure and tools available for the end-user to

self register.8. Can the administrator specify a user’s right to access content?9. Describe your access controls for individuals and groups.

Site Metrics and Reporting

1. Describe how you track and analyze activity on the web site.2. Describe the types of KPI measurements available in the application.3. Describe your performance monitoring tools for server usage, response times,

system availability, logging errors, crashes and capacity planning.4. Describe any administrator tools / formats used to create, schedule, export and

distribute reports.5. Can other analytic platforms be integrated into the system – such as Web

Trends?6. What records and versions of posts/user content do you store to meet the

auditing and compliance reports?7. How is security integrated into the reporting process?8. Where are metrics stored, what is the data format and how are these metrics

accessed?

Customer Analytics

1. Describe the capacity to appraise customer activity – such as conversion rates.2. Describe all the customer centric reports that are available.3. Describe all customer content usage reports that are available.

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Social Networking Platform Functionality

High-Level Functionality

1. Describe your core social networking tools, modules (i.e. blogs, forums), capabilities and how your system is distinctive.

2. Describe your support for user generated content, tagging, flagging, abuse reporting, social bookmarks, ratings, reviews and comments.

3. Describe your support for advertisement management and ad types.4. Explain your content distribution functionality – such as sharing ideas, surveys

and polls.5. Describe your support for chat rooms, group chat and one-to-one customer

service chat.6. Describe your support for messaging, message boards, SMS, IM, texting and note

passing,7. Explain your support for calendars, events, event calendars, event chat and

event management.8. Describe your support for contact list, friends and groups.9. Describe any support for workspaces, web conferencing or other collaboration

features.10. Describe your support for subscribing, updates, watch list and alerts for a users

area of interest.

Profiles and User Experience

1. Describe the method / tools used for setting-up user profile, and the key categories of user profile information that is gathered during the user registration.

2. Explain how profile information can be used to engage users.3. How do you deal with un-registered users, and what rights do they have?4. Describe the personalization process, and the data required about a consumer to

implement personalization?5. Describe the functionality used in the personalization process.6. What development tools are available to administrators or programmers to

extend personalization?7. Describe your approach and the business rules that are used to target

information from a specific user based on their personalization profile. 8. Does the platform uses any 3rd party rules engines to target user information?9. What controls do moderators have over user generated content?

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Content Management Systems (CMS)

1. Describe all the content types that are supported, and how and where the content is stored.

2. Explain how I would integrate my Content Management System into your software, and how the software deals with security issues?

3. Describe any lost functionality introduced by not using the Content Management System that is built into your platform?

4. Explain how your Content Management System supports my SEO strategy? Are URLs configurable?

User Generated Content

1. List all the user generated content types (and Meta data) supported by your systems.

2. List the tools and templates available to (consumers) to generate content? 3. Describe the tools available to support the personal and the public sharing of

content.

Search, Navigation & Taxonomy

1. Describe your search engine functionality, and the ability to index multiple content formats.

2. Do you support faceted navigation based upon an existing taxonomy structure? 3. Describe your tools and support for an organizational taxonomy.4. What functionality exists to import, create or manage a new taxonomy?5. Can you generate a taxonomy based on existing content and its Meta data?6. Do you have subject specific taxonomies that can be imported, modified and

extended?

Polls & Ratings

1. Describe how your system supports ranking, commenting and reviews.2. Describe polling functionality, and how they are used.

Lead Generation

1. Describe the functionality and tools available to support advertising and classifieds in marketing campaigns when prospecting for customers.

2. Does the system provide the ability to distribute information across community groups and discussion forums?

Collaboration - Social Graphing and Relation Controls

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1. Describe how friends list are visually managed and displayed in your system.2. Describe how friends are connected. Explain the permission and usage controls

in managing the relationship with other users.3. Explain the procedures and authorization controls required to invite friends to

join community groups and forums.4. Explain how you maintain contact lists and user directories.

Collaboration - Conferencing

1. Do you support out-of-the-box web conferencing? 2. Describe your support for 3rd party web conferencing services such as Webex.3. Do you integrate with Microsoft Exchange? Explain your support for the

collaborative components of MS Exchange.4. List any software requirements required to support integration.

Workflow / Business Process

1. Describe any workflow functionality available to consumers, moderators and administrators. Describe the security and administration features.

2. What 3rd party workflow services are supported by your platform?

Other Social Eco-Systems

1. Explain your support for other social technology platforms such as Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn and Facebook. Do you support API access to these platforms?

Terms and Conditions

Terms and Conditions

1. Describe the terms and conditions of your license and service agreements. List the restrictions on use, warranties, limitation of liability, indemnity and law venue.

2. Describe your Service Level Agreement, and your commitment to fix or replace defective software.

Licensing and Pricing

1. Describe your standard enterprise pricing model and cost.2. Describe your standard hosting and licensing model with cost. 3. Describe the process and metrics used to calculate license fees.

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4. Describe the process for calculating maintenance fees.5. Describe your professional service plans and pricing.6. Describe your standard acceptance test requirements for getting paid.7. Describe any certified 3rd party vendors who can implement your software, and

the typical cost.8. Describe training programs for developers, administrators and moderators and

associated cost.

Roadmap

1. Please provide an overview of your product roadmap for next two years.

Top Social Networking Vendors

1. Jive Software Inc. 2. Mazinga Inc. 3. Lithium Inc. 4. Leverage Software Inc. 5. Visible Technologies

(monitoring)6. Live World Inc. 7. Radian6 8. Bazaarvoice Inc. 9. Awareness Hub 10. Zimbra Inc. 11. Pluck Inc.

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