Monster.com has announced that they're shutting down their "social network" Tickle. This follows Conde Nast, Verizon, and other major brands who seem to giving up on using this approach.
I think the major problem is that companies see the whole "social" online space as a new business unit, not as a business model that impacts their existing operations. When it doesn't pan out as an easily defined revenue-generator or marketing tool, they panic.
Monster didn't need Tickle as a separate entity. What they need are ways for their millions of job-seekers, employers, and workers to compare notes, meet each other, and contribute to something valuable. How is filling out a bunch of quizzes on a subsidiary network helping achieve this? If they really want to take advantage of the Internet as a social medium, they need to implant social thinking and capabilities throughout their main brand site. They've got a great opportunity -- who wants (needs!) to socialize more than people looking for work, career advice, or a new hire? The company should be putting its energy into figuring out ways to help this socialization on monster.com, not into trying to build a new place to do it.
Looking at Microsoft, they're trying to compete with MySpace and other social networks through their Live Spaces product. It's not a bad collection of tools and places allowing users to meet and share with one another. But MS have another product that I think will be an even bigger application of the social phenomenon: Photosynth. This tool literally pieces together thousands of shared photos (and other data down the road, I imagine) to create an enormous collage.
The social aspect is described towards the end of this video:
They also show some other pretty cool technology.
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