WSJ: Private Social Networks Have Advantages — Expect to Pay “between six and seven figures”(?)

We are so in the right business according to the Wall Street Journal. Lee Gomes interviews chief executive of Sparta Social Networks, who apparently is making big, big money from supplying dedicated social networks to companies. Don’t have plans to build your own? Better get on it:

“…social networks have become the Web site of this decade. Back in the ’90s if you didn’t have a Web site you were irrelevant; the same was true with having an e-commerce site in 2001. That is where social networks are right now.”

We’re helping clients now with specs and designs for their own private-branded social networks and it sounds like we are charging not nearly enough:

” A highly customized social network can run between six and seven figures. But those are ones with lots of bells and whistles.”

I say bullcookies to this. Almost all companies need a web site. A much smaller percentage need to provide a Facebook-style community to join. Harley Davidson fanatics are not the same as Clapper owners.

Given the open source solutions out there — seven figures as a relevant range figure seems outlandishly high to me, at least for the initial launch. I suspect you could push it to include the allocated overhead related to the time spent by marketing V.P.s and other high-level staffers required to make it take hold, and certainly maintaining servers dedicated to millions uploading videos etc. would require that kind of budget. A major marketing campaign could be a part the expense being considered here — but I doubt it.

For the vast majority of companies, a custom social network should run between four and five figures IMHO.

Launching a social network? Plan to spend seven figures? We want to have you speak at our next conference. Contact steve AT parnassusgroup DOT com.

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