In 2008, Brian Solis released what was and is called the Conversation Prism – a visual reference guide of the social media landscape and more popular social networks.
Version 4 has just been released.
This version has reduced the complexity of the previous version by removing 122 services and only adding 111.
The updated version breaks in each network into channels and then appears to break them down according to use e.g. marketing, sales, communications, HR, brand, community, service and development.
For example, Facebook and Google+ feature prominently for businesses who want to focus on brand building. Slideshare, Eventbrite, You Tube for businesses focused on sales.
Businesses and agencies can use it as part of the toolkit to help plan their next social media strategy.
It’s a good reference guide to see what networks might be better suited for your business according to your needs.
It isn’t going to tell you the best place to reach your target audience – you still have to do the research for this. But you can use it in conjunction with your research to identify channels that might be a good fit with your business objectives.
Of course, anything that is new can become obsolete very quickly. Some services featured on prism are no longer available (e.g. LinkedIn Answers) and some trending services are not featured (e.g. micro-video Vine).
But I still think it is still a handy reference guide and I love the fact that it is very visual and has been simplified.
You can see a sample below or download the guide free or purchase a hard copy from the website.
