Whereas social networks grow up with more and more users and features and community management becomes a real specialty/added value, the EU bubble also wants to have its piece of cake. What are the main social networks for EU affairs people? How are they using them? What for? Will the rising demand be satisfied?

The list could have been longer but we decided to focus on 4 platforms matching the following definition: blogging feature, sharing of photos/videos, event management. Which excludes Twitter and LinkedIn for example…

1. Facebook

Launched in 2004
Members today: >400 million active users worldwide – >2000 estimated “EU bubble” people mostly based in Brussels

Everyone knows Facebook, the biggest social network in the world. It started as a small directory for Harvard students. Now it is “the” online place to be for everyone, for many Europeans, including citizens as well as people from the EU bubble who like to share information, photos, videos, events and much more.

In a word, most of the “EU people” are on Facebook and quite some of them are active. Some examples: the European parliament fan page, the European movement Belgium page or the European parliament group which gathers over 1800 members looking for EU parties and events in Brussels.

That said, Facebook is not free from defaults. For hardcore EU people who are barely interested in playing Farmville, Mafia War or Werewolves vs Vampires, Facebook can quickly become annoying. Not to mention the chronic privacy issues (Read Why Facebook is wrong: privacy is still important) which are increasingly poisoning the once good reputation of Facebook.

Potential evolution: Some predict Facebook will collapse and we may see another platform as a replacement. More probably, the community will be soon reaching a critical point and stop growing to concentrate on existing and new features, e.g. compete with other online key players: with Google to become internet users’ favorite search engine/starting page, with Twitter on the real-time communication market or with Foursquare on geolocalization web services. Despite all past and present scandals, Facebook’s leadership, also within the EU community, doesn’t seem to be in danger… unless privacy happens to become a real issue.

2. IABC Belgium

Launched in 2009
>200 members

IABC was originally founded in the USA in 1970. In 40 years, it has been gathering over 16.000 business communication professionals from 70 countries, organizing seminars and conferences, sharing good practices “in real life”. Belgium is not an exception. To support its development and increase its online potential, IABC Belgium added a social network at the beginning of 2009. At the time, this was also a way to reconcile business communicators with institutional communicators, i.e. from the EU institutions. Hosted on the free Ning platform, it may be considered as the profesional counterpart to Facebook. After almost a year, this platform is pretty successful and counts over 200 local experts, mostly based in Brussels, from various businesses. Like Facebook, the platform offers a blogging feature, the possibility to organize events, share information (and quite some fun also sometimes). IABC uses the full potential of Ning whose reliability and modularity – Ning offers loads of small useful apps for their users – have proven to be a success over time. Unlike Facebook, IABC Ning focuses on the essential: business! No stupid casual games, no dating! Eventually, IABC Ning has been growing far beyond the borders of Belgium and communication, gathering all kinds of “connected” people, i.e. bloggers, twitterers and more generally speaking people interested in web 2.0 topics which denatures a bit the original purpose of the IABC community and appears as a threat.

Potential evolution: The community will probably keep on growing little by little, adding more and more professionals, some of them not always dealing with communication issues. This may represent an identity problem for the IABC Ning. However, it should be largely compensated by a majority of active communicators… and by a real community management?

3. LinoLounge

Launched in 2009
>60 members

This is the first social network meant exclusively “for EU professionals”, i.e. public affairs people, lobbyists, EU media, and to a lesser extent EU bloggers. LinoLounge currently gathers around 60 people after a few months. Unlike Facebook and like IABC, LinoLounge is meant primarily for active and rather “serious” people. Casual gamers will be disappointed. At first sight, LinoLounge has arrived at the right time, since everyone is talking about social media and web 2.0 in Brussels. Not only is LinoLounge a pioneer on this niche market, but it combines two interesting sides: one “casual” and voluntarily basic social network side where experts can exchange information, cool links and events, but also one job board side where recruiters can pick among the high profiles database freed from students or non-EU-related people. For candidates, this is also an interesting new way to optimize their passive search for a new job. No employer would know if you are on LinoLounge to connect with EU fellows or to secretly look for a vacancy…

Like IABC, LinoLounge is also based on the free Ning platform, at least the social network side. This makes it very modular and handy, but as a consequence both sites are very similar, which represents a higher risk for the newcomer. LinoLounge also shares a certain amount of common members with IABC, many of them being on Facebook too. This is a real issue: the more social networks there are, the more difficult it becomes to attract and loyalize members.
Last but not least, the original double positioning may be hard to understand for visitors who will have to switch from one website/domain (linolounge.eu: the HR part) to another (ning.linolounge.com: the “fun” part), with two different templates, the first one running on a proprietary solution, the latter on the Ning solution. As a result, members can have two profiles with two distinct pictures (one serious for recruiters, one funnier for EU fellows) but also some difficulties to understand how to navigate between contents. This complicated navigation clearly spoils the user experience. LinoLounge is trying to compensate these handicaps with an active and impeccable community management, with “EU geek style” videos and regular blog posts to entertain members. At the moment, these contents are apparently not enough to create life within the community.

Potential evolution: LinoLounge social network’s success may partly rely on IABC’s. If the first comer keeps on expanding far beyond its core communication business, it may look like mission impossible… There is of course a real added value combining several services in one place but it will be hard to fight against old habits and inertia. People looking for seriousness may prefer IABC, younger EU people may prefer Facebook for fun and everyone could just be happy with Eurobrussels and Monster to get a job. From the social network perspective, unless Facebook crashes pushing all the EU people to a new promised land, LinoLounge is not very likely to grow. On the contrary, from the HR perspective, LinoLounge may become a tough competitor for the market leader Eurobrussels and its challenger Euractiv on the EU job market if the database of high profiles were to be heavily promoted as such and priced at its right value. Time will tell…

4. Web 2 EU/Civilservant.eu

Launched in 2009
>10 members

This is the latest online community effort around the EU, also based on the Ning platform. It is meant as the natural evolution of the web2EU twibe and IABC’s web2EU group. Originally, this new Ning was meant to enhance internal communication for EU civil servants before a potential reshaping as a bridge between EU actors and citizens. A few weeks after its birth, the network already seems to be dead with only 12 people so far… Is there a pilot on board?

Potential evolution: With the very same technical background as IABC and LinoLounge and an obvious overlapping positioning, there is no apparent added value for the Web2EU social network and no reason to join, especially for people working outside the EU institutions. Unless a miracle, we may expect a slow and painless death…

Conclusion

Nature hates emptiness. Until the arrival of Facebook into the EU bubble, there had been a sleeping need for online places to gather EU affairs people as it has previously been the case for other existing (offline) communities. Facebook was just the beginning. Three years after the emergence of social media among communication professionals, the whole EU bubble finally seems to have awaken at once and is now trying to desperately catch up with this delay as fast as possible. As a result, several dedicated EU social networks were born in a very short time, but with an apparent lack of strategy and vision, creating brand identity problems and failing to answer the most important question: social networks are great, but for what purpose? The European project may be huge and deserve a specific social website next a generalist one like Facebook, but 4 platforms are obviously too many for such a small world.