Design inspiration is a weekly post that showcases examples of some of the best new web design from around the internet. To submit to Design Inspiration, click the “submit” tab at the top of the page and follow the instructions for submitting your site or a site you wish to feature.

Lake Nona

http://learnlakenona.com

CoFinery

http://www.cofinery.com

Team Viget

http://teamviget.com

Big Bite Creative

http://bigbitecreative.com

Syropia

http://syropia.net

For each different structure you will need to supply different accounting records and you may have to notify different Government departments about your earnings, tax and revenue.

This might all sound a bit daunting, but it is extremely important that you understand the compliance in order to make the right decision for your company. Here is an overview of each of the different company structures, the advantages, disadvantages and what responsibilites each one will ask of you.

The following is an overview of each of the different options you have. Look out for more in depth posts about each structure in the future.

Self Employed

Registering as Self Employed is the easiest company structure to set up and it is the right choice if you are want to become self employed, particular if you are in the service industry like a tradesman of a freelancer. There isn’t much in the way of paper work to complete and paying your Tax and National Insurance is pretty straight forward.

Choosing a name

Anyone can set them self up as Self Employed, but there are a couple of things to bare in mind. Firstly you can either trade as your name, eg. Philip Brown, or you pick a name for your business, eg. PBDesign. When choosing a business name, you have to ensure that it has not already been taken, it doesn’t contain any offence words and it doesn’t contain any misleading words of phrases. For example, you can’t call your self MikeRoweSoft!

You can search the Companies House database of company names here to find a name that hasn’t already been taken.

Legal requirements

Depending on your industry, you may need a licence in order to legally run your business. For example, taxi drivers must has a taxi licence.

If you are going to be working from home, you may have to pay business rates or get permission from your local authority. This only really applies if you are going to be making lots of noise, altering your home or generally causing a nuisance to your neighbours. If for example, you are going to be a freelance graphic designer working from a computer in your spare room, you have nothing to worry about. If you are renting, you should also probably check that your landlord is ok with your running a business from the property.

Now that you are Self Employed, you will be responsible for paying your own Tax and National Insurance. To do this, you simply need to register with HMRC as Self Employed so they can set up their records. You will then need to complete a self assesment each year and send the amount of Tax you owe to the Government. If you use an accountancy package like FreeAgent this should be pretty straight forward.

Other things to consider

If you think you are going to make over £73,000 you will need to register for VAT. If you don’t think you are going to make that much, you don’t have to register, but registration is voluntary so you may aswel do it sooner rather than later.

If you are going to become an employer you will need to collect Tax and National Insurance for your employees too. This is called a PAYE (Pay As You Earn) scheme.

The advantages and disadvantages of being a Sole Trader

Advantages

• Easy to set up
• Simple accounts and records
• You keep all of your profit
• You make the decisions on your work and your future

Disadvantages

• You are personally liable for any debt you run up
• If you need to raise money or get a loan, you will have to provide collateral from your own assets

Partnerships

If you are looking to set up a company with a friend or former collegue you might want to choose a Partnership as your company structure. You can think of a Partnership as a bit like being a Sole Trader, only there is two of you! This means that, much like a Sole Trader, the administration is relatively straight forward, but you and your partner are also personally liable for any debts your occur.

To set up a Partnership, you and atleast one other person initially invest in the company and you share the profits, losses, burden and responsibility. This means that if your Partnership gets into trouble, you will be personally liable to pay the companies debt.

The stress of running a company can strain even the strongest relationship. Whilst setting up a Partnership you can also set up a Partnership Deed, which basically is a contract that states the roles, responsibilities and how the company will be run. If the Partnership eventually comes to an end, a Partnership Deed can make that messy process a lot cleaner.

Each member of a Partnership has the responsibility of paying their own Tax, National Insurance and dealing with HMRC by completing a Self Assesment.

The advantages and disadvantages of being a Partnership

Advantages

• You have other people to share the burden of running a company
• The personal risk is shared among your partners
• Each partner will be personally invested in the future success of the company
• You can also have Limited Partners and Sleeping Partners who contribute money, but don’t get involved in the day-to-day running on the business

Disadvantages

• If the partnership gets into trouble, you will be liable to pay debts
• You need to organise to pay your own Tax and National Insurance

Limited Company

Setting up a limited company is by far the most complicated legal structure to create, but it does off advantages over the being a Sole Trader or a Partnership. You can register your company online here for about £20.

When setting up a Limited Company, you must nominate at least one Director and allocate shares. There are cetain restrictions on becoming a Director of a company, and you should get professional help if you are daunted about the legal obligations that are involved.

As with becoming a Sole Trader or setting up a Partnership, there are certain restrictions when choosing a company name. You can’t have a name that is too similar to an already existing company, and you can’t have any words in your name that might suggest an affiliation with a Government department or misleading words like “International” if you are a domestic company.

Like the other legal structures, you will need to pay Tax, National Insurance and VAT (if applicable) to HMRC. You will also need to pay Corporation Tax on your income and profits.

The advantages and disadvantages of a Limited Company

Advantages

• The company is a different legal entity and so you are not personally liable for any debts
• You can allocate shares and raise investment

Disadvantages

• By far the most complicated to set up
• More administration than the other company structures
• You will need to pay Corporation Tax

Starting a company is the dream of every young and aspring Entrepreneur. Being your own boss and having the control to choose the future of your business is what many people aim to achieve. But the reality is, starting a company is increadibly hard. You will have to work far harder than you would in a normal job, and you won’t be able to escape the stress of your company, your business cash flow and your responsibility to your staff, suppliers and customers.

However starting your own company does not have to be such a big risk if you approach it in the right way. Here is my definitive guide to starting your own company whilst minimising the amount of risk you take.

Get a full time job in your industry

The very first step you should take on your quest to starting your own company, is take a job in your industry. This is the first step, not only because it’s the first logical thing you should do, but also because it’s one of the most important. If you are leaving University soon, or you have dreams of quitting your dead-end job to start your own company, the best first step you can take is to get experience working for a company in your field.

Being an employee has a lot of advantages at this early stage. For one, you will be getting a regular pay check and you don’t need to worry about getting new clients or managing your cash flow. You are likely to be less stressed and so you can concentrate on honing your skills and picking up the knowledge you will need to launch your own company.

Even if you believe you are an expert in your field and you know everything you need to know in order to start, you should still take a job to make sure that when you do start up you aren’t confronted with any hidden suprises that you didn’t account for.

Start building a professional network

You need to start building up your professional network. Through your work you will begin meeting clients, suppliers and friends of your collegues and your boss. Take the time to get to know these people on a personal level and strive to help them in any way you can, without looking for anything in return. Having a professional network will be critical for your future success as your first clients or referrals will likely be sourced from it. Put every effort into prooving you are increadible at your job today, and you will feel the benefit of your hardwork tomorrow.

Don’t just start adding everyone you can on LinkedIn, take every opportunity you can to develop meaningful relationships with a handful of key people.

Setting up your company

When you set up a company, there are many administrative things you need to take care of before you start trading. Without setting these things up first, you will be forced to waste time later on when you should be spending your time dealing with your clients.

Here is what you need to set up;

Choosing your company structure

The first thing you need to decide is your company structure. In the UK you can either be a Limited company, a partnership or a sole trader. Each structure has a different legal status and each has a number of benefits and drawbacks for choosing each one. Look out for a future post where I’ll break down each in more detail.

Register your company name

Next you need to register with Companies House. You will need to decide on a company name and fill in the required forms to set up your company.

Set up a business bank account

Next you will need to set up a business bank account in order to manage your money. Shop around the various hight street banks to see what business account suits your needs the best. Each bank will probably have different terms and conditions so you should chose the account that will best suit your needs, don’t just go with the same one as your current account.

Website and business cards

Having a website will probably be the best investment for your “marketing budget”. From around £10 a month you can set up a professional site that people can access who want to find out more about what you can offer them. If you have no experience with setting up a website, take a look at a service like SquareSpace and register yourcompany.com with a domain registrar. Now that you have your own domain name you can also set up a company email address like yourname@yourcompany.com. There is nothing as unprofessional as using a free email provider to conduct business communication.

You will also need your first set of business cards to hand out to people who are interested in your services or who you meet at business networking events. Business cards are really very important as you will need something to hand out to people with your contact details on. Go to Moo.com to design and order your first set of cards.

Accounting software

Next you need to be able to handle your accounts. I would recommend using a service like FreeAgent. FreeAgent is a completely web based accountancy package that can handle all your incomings and outgoings and automatically give data back about the tax you owe and how your business is doing financially. At only £30 a month for a Limited company, you can’t go wrong and it will prevent a lot of headaches down the road.

Get into the habit of working…a lot!

Now that you’ve got a full time job you will need to dedicate a good chunk of your time outside of work to developing your company in tandum. If this seems like something you don’t really want to get into, congratualations quit now, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and money in the long run. For the rest of you, getting into the habit of dedicating nearly all of your time to productive work will set you up for launching a successful company. Realistically you need to be spending atleast a couple of nights a week and a good chunk of the weekend working on your company in order to get everything set up and begin taking clients long before you quit your safe day job.

If you get home from work each night and you don’t want to work on your company for the next 5 or 6 hours, then perhaps you should re-think starting a business. You are going to have to dedicate the next couple of years to getting this company off the ground, so if you can’t find the motivation now, you never will.

Networking

As I mentioned, meeting people is one of the key aspects of running a succesful business. Business networking is the best way to meet like minded business owners, clients, suppliers and friends. However, don’t go to a business networking event just to pick up clients, you should go with the attitude and aim of helping other attendees. Go with the mindset of “How can I help this person?” and don’t expect anything in return. People always have their own agenda, and so if you can help someone with either advice or your service, they will be far more likely to call on you or refer you to a paying client.

Customer development

There are many different types of business you could start. From suppling a product to offering service, your business idea will more than likely be based upon an assumption that you have spotted an opportunity to build a company and make money. However this is an untested assumption that could be completely wrong. Many of the best companies started with one vision, but transitioned to another once they started to get feedback from their clients. Don’t assume that your idea is perfect, because it most likely isn’t. Test your idea with potenial clients and see what their reaction is. Are they fighting to give you their money? Or do they not seem interested when you describe your idea? Talk to as many potential clients as you can and refine your idea until you have something that you know will work. Don’t worry about seeming unprofessional infront of a potential client, by introducing yourself early, finding a solution to their problem, and developing a strong relationship with them, they are far more likely to turn into a paying customer once you are ready to serve them.

Start profitable from day one

I believe being profitable is the most important thing you can do in business, and by ensuring you are profitable from day one is the best first step you can take. Being profitable early on can be achieved with a number of small steps.

Firstly, now that you have a full time wage coming in, save that money and use it to set up your company, buy your business cards, attent networking events and buy any equipment you need to start. It might seem tempting to put these expenses through your business account, but actually you should be doing the investing straight out of your own pocket.

Secondly, do as much as you can for free and don’t tie yourself to contracts. Don’t hire office space just yet and don’t waste money on frills. However, if you need to employee a freelancer to make you a website or do design work, then don’t try and do these things yourself. A professional identity is worth every penny.

Design inspiration is a weekly post that showcases examples of some of the best new web design from around the internet. To submit to Design Inspiration, click the “submit” tab at the top of the page and follow the instructions for submitting your site or a site you wish to feature.

Cinema

http://www.tapmonkeys.com/cinema

Moody International

http://www.moodyinternationalllc.com

Punch Fork

http://punchfork.com

The Geek Designer

http://thegeekdesigner.com

Hunter’s

http://wineshop.hunters.co.nz

What is a utility?

A utility is defined as “The state of being useful, profit-able, or beneficial”, whilst a fad is defined as “An intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, esp. one that is short-lived; a craze”. In the tech industry, and particularly the consumer Internet, there seems to be a new fad every couple of months. However even with the huge amount of attention that comes with being the latest hot fad, only a select few transition to becoming a utility application.

A product makes the transition from a fad to a utility by being able to add value to the user’s experience. I believe that nearly all products start out as an experiment, but the key change is when the product team find the value that has sparked the rise in attention and they subsequently double down on that experience to move from a fad to a utility.

I think many new products start out without the long term vision of becoming a utility, but it is that realisation that powers user engagement.

Examples of the fad to utility transition

Arguably, just about any product that has maintained interest and continued to grow in user numbers and engagement can be said to have made this transition. As I mentioned previously, this transition is by no means the only reason for success and the following examples obviously had many factors that have contributed to their success.

Foursquare

The first example is Foursquare. Foursquare started off as a way of broadcasting your whereabouts to your friends. Gamification and badges and the inate desire to share pictures and locations fuelled much of Foursquare’s early growth. However the real vision of Dennis and Naveen was the transition to become a utility. Now with billions of checkins, location data, reviews and user preferences, Foursquare can boast to be the number one geolocation application. Foursquare has built such a large moat around it’s company, it arguably cannot be caught, even by the likes of Facebook.

eBay

The second example is eBay. eBay began life as a way of simply allowing people to connect in order to buy and sell items. eBay quickly grew to become the number one second hand market in the world and now hosts millions of auctions every single day. eBay’s transition from fad to utility was based on the way it allowed people to become professional eBay merchants. eBay become much more than a service to buy unique little trinkets or memorabilia, it spawned an ecosystem that gave it’s users a fantastic way of buying and an opportunity for many to become their own boss.

Facebook

And the third example is Facebook. Facebook has become much more than a social network. It is now a kin to a centralised email system. Facebook has grown to become one of the best communication tools we have at our disposal as we are connected together with our friends and family through Facebook’s social graph. In the past, whenever someone changed their phone number of their email address, it was easy to lose touch with them. Facebook has changed all that and really has made huge steps in progress in their mission to better connect the world. Arguably Facebook has transitioned into a number of utility applications, but for me, Facebook’s communication tools are the most obvious example.

How to make the transition

I believe just about any product manager/team can transition a product from a fad to a utility, it just takes the ability to objectively look at your user engagement data and product features and make some cold hard decisions about the future of your product. When planning an application, it is easy to get carried away with what you can implement and your grand vision of what you want to achieve. However if your current set of users aren’t behaving like your thought they were going to, perhaps it’s time to rething that strategy.

There’s no shame in moving away from one idea to another. It’s far better to do this as quickly as possible (as described in The Lean Start Up by Eric Ries) and make sure you have your customer development on track to discover where the value of your product lies.

For example, if your vision lies down one path, but your users are either not engaged with that path, or are heading down a different one, perhaps you need to rethink where you are taking your product.

To read more about this topic, I would highly recommend Geoffrey A. Moore’s – Crossing the chasm.

If you want to talk to me in more depth about this topic and your product, send me a message on Twitter and I’ll be happy to help!.

Here is a run down of 6 of the best (in my opinion) illustrators from the North East of England. I’ve tried to link to their portfolios / websites / twitter / Dribbble profiles, but if there is anything I’ve missed just shoot me an email at phil[at]ipbrown.com.

If you are looking to hire an illustrator or designer, I highly recommend any of the following depending on the work and style you have in mind. And if you do hire any of the following, tell them Culttt sent you!

Graeme “grabbins” Metcalf

Graeme is a freelance designer and illustrator from Durham. He has worked on various projects including Love Your Larder, Happiest and 65 Hours.

To find out more about Graeme, you can find him on Twitter, Dribbble or Carbonmade.

Vicki Bell

Vicki Bell is a illustrator and designer based near Durham. Vicki does a lot of character work, app design and icons and has found her own unique style to complement her work.

To find out more about Vicki, you can find her on Twitter, Dribbble and Carbonmade.

Lynsey Gray

Lynsey Gray is an illustrator originally from Durham but now living in London. Lynsey has worked worked on a variety of illustration projects and animated videos.

To find out more about Lynsey, you can find her on Twitter, or on her blog.

Laura Bohill

Laura Bohill is a graphic designer and illustrator from County Durham. Laura is currently working on a iPad children story book called Project: Snotbook.

To find out more about Laura, you can find her on Twitter or Carbonmade.

Bruce Parker

Bruce Parker is an illustrator from the North East who has developed his own unique “monochrome, nostalgic, chaotic and often a little surreal artwork”. Bruce had previously illustrated a car and a fridge!

To find out more about Bruce, you can him on Twitter or on his website.

The Cloud Commission

The Cloud Commission is an illustrator based in Newcastle. The Cloud Commission has a unique character based style and has worked on a variety of different mediums.

To find out more about The Cloud Commision, you can find him on Twitter or on his website.

Design inspiration is a weekly post that showcases examples of some of the best new web design from around the internet. To submit to Design Inspiration, click the “submit” tab at the top of the page and follow the instructions for submitting your site or a site you wish to feature.

Raven Tools

http://raventools.com

Postmark

http://postmarkapp.com

Blip Me

http://www.blip.me/walkie-talkie

Flight Card

http://www.sylion.com/flightcard

1minus1

http://1minus1.com

CSS3 has opened the door for a styling elements in a whole new way. It is now possible to get dramatic and detailed effects and styles with very simple CSS, where previously it would only possibly to get the same effect through a combination of images hacked together.

For a recent project I wanted to create an element that had a textured background and a gradient like in the picture above. Before CSS3 I would have had to use a combination of images to get the rounded corners and the subtle gradient. For this tutorial, the only image you will need is the White Leather texture from Subtle Patterns.

Here’s how to do it!

First bootstrap yourself the element you want to style.

<html>
<body>
	<div id="box">
</div>
<body>
</html>

Next add the CSS to quickly give the element a size and round the corners.

#box{
	width: 480px;
	height: 255px;
	border-radius: 20px;
}

Next we need to add the gradient and the texture. With CSS3 you can have RGBA colours that you can control the opacity. This allows you to have a colour that shows through a background image.

I’m not going to go into the detailed syntax of how the next bit of CSS3 works because you don’t really need to understand that to get this working. Basically you need to specify the colours that make up the gradient and then specify the image that you want to show through.

Here’s the CSS I used in the above example;

	background-color: #ededed;
	background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%, rgba(237,237,237, 0.5)), color-stop(100%, rgba(153,153,153, 0.5))), url(white_leather.png),;
	background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, rgba(237,237,237, 0.5), rgba(153,153,153, 0.5)), url(white_leather.png);
	background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(top, rgba(237,237,237, 0.5), rgba(153,153,153, 0.5)), url(white_leather.png);
	background-image: -ms-linear-gradient(top, rgba(237,237,237, 0.5), rgba(153,153,153, 0.5)), url(white_leather.png);
	background-image: -o-linear-gradient(top, rgba(237,237,237, 0.5), rgba(153,153,153, 0.5)), url(white_leather.png);
	background-image: linear-gradient(top, rgba(237,237,237, 0.5), rgba(153,153,153, 0.5)), url(white_leather.png);

The bits you need to change are where it says rgba(237,237,237, 0.5) for the colours and url(white_leather.png) for the path to your image.

To edit the colours, first type the three RGBA colour values and then type a decimal for the level of opacity.

For example, the following would be the colour black at a very low opacity (so you would be able to see a lot of the background image)

rgba(0,0,0, 0.1)

Whilst this would be the colour white with a very high opacity (so you wouldn’t be able to see much of the background image)

rgba(255,255,255, 0.9)

And it’s really that simple. This technique can be used with a combination of textured repeating backgrounds and gradients on a variety of User Interface elements to get a warm and inviting feel.

If you use this in any of your projects, feel free to leave a comment so I can take a look!

From humble beginnings

The evolution of networked computers and the Internet was one of the major turning points of the 20th Century. Finally many new technologies could come together to create a network of computer systems that spanned the globe. The change wasn’t only technological, a new generation grew up with the capabilities to communicate, share and learn across a widely distributed network of individuals. What would eventually lead to the “World Wide Web” started off as merely a way to exchange messages and data. Even before websites were widely available, social was already baked right into the foundations of the Internet.

Bulletin Board Systems (BBS)

A Bulletin Board System (BBS) was a system that allowed a user to dial into a piece of software through a phone line and engage with other people in the form of message boards, chatrooms and other similar social activity. BBS’ were popular before the Internet as we know it today really took off. BBS’ were really the first social application of what the Internet could offer users, and it was really one of the first ways you could be social with other computer users across a distributed network. BBS’ could only be accessed through a phone line and so the majority of usage was confined to the local area to prevent running up huge phone bills. Bulletin Board System technology and it’s usage was really the precursor to what would develop over the next 20 years.

Chatrooms

Chatrooms were really the evolution of BBS’ as Internet Browser’s and Graphical User Interfaces made the Internet a more user friendly place to be. Chatrooms are synchronous exchanges of messages between many distributed users. There is usually an open one-to-many public chatroom and a private messaging feature that allows one-to-one messaging. Chatrooms were extremely popular through the 1990′s and early 2000s and since then have evolved intro different sub-niches as the Internet has become fragmented. In 2004, IMVU was founded which was a virtual 3D universe that allowed users to meet other users and chat in a virtual environment. Other services such as a Second Life can also be said to derive from those early chatroom days.

Forums and messaging boards

Forums and messaging boards were one of the first and remain one of the most popular ways to interact asynchronously on the Internet. Usually targeted around a specific niche, Forums and messaging boards were one of the first ways to build a strong community because users usually had to register and build a profile in order to post a message. Because the messages were then achieved as threads, it was possible to see a particular user’s contributions over time and therefore hardcore users would build credibility and respect within the community. Although not quite as prevelant today, forums and messaging boards remain one of the best ways to talk about a specific niche to a concentrated community of like minded individuals.

Question and Answer boards

If you are looking for an answer to a very specific question, chances are someone has started a thread on a Forum somewhere on the Internet. Because Forum’s archive these threads, the question and answer exchange can be goldmine of information. It is the age old adage that, if you have a problem, chances are someone else has already had that problem.

Experts-Exchange.com was one of the first “Ask an expert” type website that capitalised on the value of the question and answer type exchanges in Forums. Experts Exchange was a subscription based site where you could get your question answered by an expert in that area. For a long time, whenever you searched Google for a specific IT related question, the top result would often be Experts Exchange. Stack Exchange is now the dominating online question and answer network with sites such as Stack Overflow that feature a huge amount of questions and a community that offers up expert answers and solutions for free.

Digg and Reddit

Digg.com is a social news site founded by Kevin Rose and launched in late 2004. Whilst similar to many of the notable online news portals of the time, Digg was completely curated by it’s dedicated community of users rather than a team of professional editors. This meant that whatever reached the first page of the site was what the community had voted up to become popular. Digg introduced the user voting system that has become a standard feature of many of the current wave of social websites and products we have today.

Reddit is a similar website to Digg in that it is a user submitted content which is then voted up or down by the community. Reddit is fragmented into “subreddits” which have specific communities of subscribed users that revolve around that subject matter or niche.

The communities of Digg and Reddit were early examples of how a website could build a community of hardcore, dedicated users. If a website got featured on Digg or Reddit it would sometimes be enough to overwhelm the website’s server due to the huge influx of traffic that would be sent by the community. Both websites also have a comment system that allow users to comment and reply to other users about each submitted piece of content.

During August 2010, Digg released version 4 of their website that dramatically changed many of the key features of the previous versions of Digg and introduced new features that were an attempt to fight back against the likes of Twitter and Facebook. Many of the hardcore Digg community did not approve of the big changes and there was a huge backlash when the new site went live. The power of a community like this should not be underestimated.

LiveJournal

Founded back in 1999, LiveJournal was one of the first social blogging platforms on the Internet. LiveJournal allowed you to start a blog and have other users leave comments. LiveJournal users had a “friend list” and could follow other user’s blogs through syndication. LiveJournal was one of the first “Web 2.0″ type companies and quite obviously inspired later companies like Myspace and Tumblr. Many of the standard features of modern social websites can be attributed back to LiveJournal.

Friendster

Known as the first real “social network” Friendster was the first services that offered the majority of the social product features we are now so familiar with. Founded in 2002 by Jonathan Abrams, Friendster allowed users to create a list of friends and share messages and information with them. Friendster was considered the number one social network until Myspace took that crown away. Although Friendster is now considerably smaller than it was in it’s heyday, it is still considered the spark that really lit the social network phenomenon that we know of today.

Myspace

Myspace, the former social networking giant, was founded in 2003 and quickly outgrew every other social network of the time, stealing the top spot from Friendster along the way. On Myspace you could “design” your profile using HTML and CSS, connect with your friends and leave comments on other people’s profiles. Myspace quickly grew in numbers and was eventually acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation for $500 million. I’ve previously wrote about Myspace’s fall from grace in the post The rise and fall of Internet super giants. Myspace would eventually lose the social networking top spot to Facebook, partly because Facebook was a better product and partly because post-acquisition Myspace made a lot of mistakes. Myspace’s story does show that the unprecedented leader can sometimes be toppled by a new up and comer.

Facebook

Facebook has out grown any other previous social network with over 800 million users and over 1 billion user connections. Facebook took many of the features of the previous generation of social networking websites and built a platform and social graph on the back of it’s huge growth, engagement and adoption rate. I’ve recently wrote my analysis on why I think Facebook is a success so I won’t go into too much detail again on this post.

Twitter

Twitter has become one of the largest social networking websites but still remains almost as simple as it was when it first launched. Twitter’s quick 140 character limit updates and default open settings have made it the place to go for breaking news, crowd sourced opinions and a constant stream of what is happening in the world. Twitter is very different to Facebook and takes a very different perspective on the tradition social network usage.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a platform that allows you to create a “Tumblelog” of text, pictures, video, links and audio. One of the pivotal features of Tumblr is the “reblog” feature that allows a user to repost a piece of content on their blog. This leads to pieces of content becoming viral as it is spread through Tumblr. Many of the most viewed content on the Internet now originates from Tumblr. Tumblr has grown extremely quickly since it’s launch in 2007 and now boast over 15 billion monthly page views.

Foursquare

Foursquare was founded in New York in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Dennis had previously founded a company that had a similar goal as Foursquare’s called Dodgeball that was acquired by Google, but got lost and forgotten about within the Googleplex. Foursquare is a geolocation service that allows a user to check-in to a specific location such as a restaurant and bar and broadcast it out to their friends. Tips, lists and to-do’s make discovering new places and user specific recommendations an integral part of the future of Foursquare. Foursquare has now logged over 1 billion check-ins and has over 15 million users around the world.

Instagram

Instagram is a social photo sharing website that is currently exclusive to iPhone. However this hasn’t prevented Instagram from growing, the service has over 15 million users, even the team behind the app have recently doubled in numbers to the grand total of 10! Instagram allows a user to take a photo, add a filter and then share it with their friends in an open social network. When Instagram launched there were already many filter photo apps that on the market. Instagram added the key ingredient of social and have never looked back.

Turntable.fm

Launched in 2010, Turntable.fm was one of the first social / music products of the Internet. Turntable.fm allows users to listen to music in real time with other users. The site is split into music rooms that specialise in a type or genre of music. Each user has the chance to DJ for the room and the other users vote if they like the DJ’s choice of song. Turntable.fm was one of the first real collective social experiences for music. Other services like UStream or Chill offer the same type of interaction but with video. Collective social experience services like Turntable.fm have now finally become a reality thanks to increasing Internet speed and bandwidth.

Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the latest social networks that allows users to create theme based image boards around things they like. Users can follow boards, comment and share images and follow other users. Pinterest is a clear sign that social networking is going to continue to fragment as users seek out their specific interests while browsing online.

The future of social

The last 5 years have seen a huge evolution of what social really means online. We’ve went from chatrooms and forums to services like Facebook and Turntable.fm. Increasingly much of our social interaction online is on a “post PC” device. Services like Instagram are completely iPhone based, but have really taken off due to the connected nature of the Internet.

Each year, a more diverse set of people begin using the Internet. At one time, social experiences were confined to specific niches such as technology related of teenagers. Now with services like Pinterest, there is an opportunity to target a completely new demographic.

The growth of Facebook and Twitter have also added a new opportunities for online social websites and services. By building on top of Facebook’s social graph or using Twitter’s OAuth, a developer can tap into the pre-existing data and connections a user has already created. This can benefit a new product in a number of ways such as tapping into the co-efficient of established services and a better user experience for new users who are looking to find their friends or simply don’t want to have to sign up to another service. I wrote about this in the post The 3 levels of user authentication.

What lies ahead in the future of the social internet? It has been said that the social technology wave has peaked. Personally I think it’s impossible to say what kind of social websites and products we’ll be using in the next 5 years. However I think some general trends will continue.

Firstly, I believe the continued fragmentation of the Internet will open new opportunities to target specific demographics. This opens many new opportunities for business and monetisation as we move away from mass consumption in the form of Television and Newspapers.

Secondly, I think more social applications that are focused on mobile with a web service as a complementary rather than the main point of interaction. Mobile phones have come a long way in the past couple of years. We know have powerful, Internet ready devices in our pockets that offer a far greater intertwining of our real lives. Instagram is the perfect example of how a company can focus their attention on a mobile app and still have huge success.

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Hungarian Wine Society

http://www.hungarianwinesociety.co.uk

Goodsie

http://goodsie.com

Gimme Delivery

http://www.gimmedelivery.com

Pepper Plane

http://www.pepperplane.com

Porto Alegre

http://www.portoalegre.cc