Linkedin recently went public and doubled their intial stock offering. Facebook, Groupon and Zenga will have their IPO's soon. Google offered to buy Groupon for 9 billion but it is likely to price higher than that value with its IPO. Twitter has been valued at 6 billion. The value that investors place in Social Networking is clear. To date most of the social networks revolve around personal topics of discussion.
AllyLocal focuses on business to business and customer to business networking - a nich that still needs to be addressed. What value will investors find with this model? We shall see. The AllyLocal founders are nearing completion of the website and getting ready for launch!
google-site-verification=wLfGnbtX8dngPdp2s-cVs-seE_1oaDtuyXB-r0jf5mE
Replies
The AllyLocal team is a group of small business owners looking to form a network where business can find value through communicating through a social network. It is free and is formal way to communicate with other businesses and customers to create alliances. The web site focuses on creating alliances with other business and sharing customer groups through coordinated marketing campaigns, common high standard business practices, and allowing customers to also participate in the growth direction of the company though this social network.
The network also focuses on grouping local with other local business entities. Even though local groups will be created, this can then be expanded to regional groups and even national and international groups. When the founders launch the website there will be several local groups operating based on the founder's contacts and existing alliances. As people share the value of this network hopefully it will expand. As it expands the AllyLocal team will expand the network options based on user feedback and use.
There is no doubt that social networking, properly used, can provide great tools for small business owners. However, the fact that investors are placing such great value on recent social networking IPOs is relatively meaningless--remember the values that investors placed on TheGlobe.com, WebVan, and Pets.com?
Facebook no doubt offers great value in the personal social networking space, but Groupon is beginning to look more like a ponzi scheme than a sustainable business. I may be wrong on this (it surely wouldn't be the first time) and I would welcome stories from members who have had positive results using Groupon.
Like any marketing tool, the real test of value is return on investment. For AllyLocal that will be the return on my investment of time. Time will tell, but I have hopes that allylocal will be a social network that provides my business with a high rate of return.