Hi James,
thanks for the compliment.

You have a valid point, to some degree, in saying “what it thinks are” the largest 10 companies in the field. A really comprehensive, “objective” list of companies is not possible as the market seems to be very fragmented. This is also one of the major insights when I did the research.

Still, our list of the 10 companies is certainly not about “the largest” and we state that in the article ... if you go by size then there are some others out there, particularly those who live by ondeck traffic which should have been on the list. The list hopes to have identified 8 companies which have a particular good shot at dealing with MySpace/Facebook & Co.

We had a couple of criteria, with a particular bias towards offdeck traffic as we think that this gives the companies that “particular good shot”. The nomination process went via peer review, mostly. I did a lot of interviews and the first question my interviewees had to answer was: “who are you competitors ?” If a company got named a competitor, then I researched it/tried to get an interview with it (& again asked for the competitors). This is what I mean with peer review. The process took me a month and pretty much all the data is double-checked.

I hope this background gives you some additional transparency to how we came to this list. Keep up the good work,
Matthäus

Hi Matthaus,

Thanks for the clarification—and I shouldn’t have read “most significant” as “largest”, that was an error on my part. The “what it thinks are” was just me pointing out that it is your objective list, rather than an absolute fact or my list (although I agree with your points).

Matthaus,

Why is Loop Mobile’s MOKO left of the list, mobile-only social networks you covered? It has one of the most advanced user-experiences and its usage statistic’s are incredible.

-jon.

Hi Jon,

I did come across MOKO, but left it off the list because of the information available to me. Still, as I say, there’s a good chance that we missed out on some SMN out there. During my research, for example, I stumbled upon some SMN in Asia which are massive but I simply could not cover. So I appreciate any comments and please feel free to send me an email in case you think you have something for us worth reporting on in that regard (matthaeus at hmmaha.com). Thanks !

Jon—I thought of Moko too, but it’s mainly in Australia—a small market. Still, I think it’s got a good chance of avoiding the MySpace/Facebook steamroller with its white label business, like with Big Brother.

Thanks Matthaus and James for your responses. I just want to clarify one thing, MOKO is not just big in Australia but the UK as well, with a growing user-base in the US too.

In any case I think these guys have the right strategy and a product that will allow them to scale in what is a fragmented and unproven space.