Social media today is just not the hub for marketers, HR professionals, networking enthusiasts, youth interaction and communication freaks. It is grown beyond that. There are business models that runs on social phenomenon. I am not talking about those agencies and consultancies that make other companies’ social media roadmaps for their marketing, HR, research, collaboration and other needs.

I am also not pointing towards LinkedIn, facebook, twitter, orkut and other social networking sites. Neither I am talking about concepts such as Poll daddy, vimeo, flickr (pay for premium services) or Illuminated Mind, ShoeMoney, DIY Themes (affiliated models), subscription, virtual goods or the usual advertising model.

The Social Business Model today is beyond networking sites, affiliated and advertising models. These patterns run exclusively on the collated ideas phenomenon. Collated ideas can be either user generated contents or collective intelligence. The host platform that triggers the ideas and contents gets benefitted most and the members generating the ideas or contents also gets benefitted too in form of winner, recognition, ideas, evaluation and money.

Few Social Business - Collated Ideas model examples:

1. Scopial:
• Allows users to design T-shirts on different themes hosted as contest
• Winner receives a cash prize.
• People who are not participating in the contest can still collaborate and vote for the best T-shirts and comment.
• The best T-shirts are printed and are made available for sale.
• Designs of non-winners become property of Scopial which can be later used for printing or selling it to the apparel designers.

2. Jade Magnet:
• Allows companies and individuals to collaborate with freelance website, card, animal, newsletter, poster, packaging and other designers.
• Around 1100 designers contribute and bid for the projects raised by 40 clients.
• Projects also raised in forms of contest. Top 5 designs selected by the client are chose as winners. The winner obtains 80% of the amount and the 5% of the amount is distributed among the runner ups.
• The rest of the design entries in the contest become a part of database.

3. Voicetap:
• This is an interesting phenomenon that will help you connect with expert of your domain at no cost (for now).
• You can get your knowledge query answered by relevant expert.
• You are allowed to register as expert or as user.
• Experts who register obtain recognition, rewards and credibility.
• Users get handy solutions for their queries.
• You can make use of this service through your mobile phone or over the web through Gtalk or VOIP.
• This free of cost service will soon be chargeable (a guess).

I am continuing my research on similar social business models and will update soon. If you think you are running your business on similar kind of model you can mail me about it in 5 -7 short bullet sentences on sorav@echovme.com. Open for suggestions.

For a conversation catch me on Twitter & facebook. Share