Building Successful Online Research Networks with the Last.fm Model

The emergence of online social networks such as Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn changed the way people socially engaged and interacted with each other, both in private and in professional life. Could the principles driving these websites be carried over to scientists and the world of research though? Between 2006 and 2008, more than a dozen online social networks for scientists launched. And for the most part, these could all be considered a failure. So, what happened? What was so different from the mainstream social networks that didn’t work with academic social networks? Could the lessons learned be used to create ”valuable” researcher networks? Are there any other types of online networks that could in fact be mimicked successfully?