Controversial, perplexing for marketers and beloved by their users, social networking sites have become a critical trend for web strategists to monitor.
In an article called “Social Networks as a Marketing Channel,” eMarketer provides powerful stats on the popularity of the sites and helpful links to articles about companies that are developing business models around collaborative publishing.
The article contains comScore Networks data showing that the two leading social network sites, MySpace.com and Facebook.com, attract more than five million unique visitors a month. The number of visitors to Facebook.com increased by 14% in December 2005, while MySpace.com saw a 34% increase.
Such growth, and the seismic shift in online behaviour it represents, is sure to attract the attention of mainstream media. Along with the skepticism for which big media is known. ABC News Radio, for example, is conducting an in-depth series of reports on social networking. Included in their coverage is an interview with Nate Elliot, an analyst for Jupiter Research.
“Certainly there are a large amount of people spending a large amount of time on this site,” says Elliot. “When you look at the huge numbers they throw out there — 50 [million], 60 million registered users — those are a mirage….”
Elliot says that 12 percent of Internet users in the
Those who have been following the growth of social networking know that pesky analysts poking holes in their numbers has not been the main concern. Predators, scam artists, employers and campus authorities have discovered that the sites contain a treasure trove of personal data that can used against the social networkers.
In “Big Brother is Reading Your Blog,” BusinessWeek provides a number of examples of how this private information can be abused, and how the sites’ users are responding. These include:
- Avoiding getting “dooced” (fired for comments on blogs) by adding fictional information to postings to throw employers off the scent.
- Aggressively using the privacy controls supplied by the sites.
- Searching sites for evidence that campus police are monitoring them, baiting the authorities with bogus events and then surprising them when they show up.
- Moving to sites that promise greater safety, such as YFly.com that has a “report the creep” button on every page. If users suspect an adult is on the site, they refer complaints to a team of volunteers at the high schools represented on the site who will verify the person’s identity.
Whether or not these social networking sites are actually delivering the numbers they claim, there is no disputing two important facts:
- The hardcore users are making innovative use of technology, their imaginations and fundamentally important social models to make them work.
- People are already monetizing the opportunity, whether it’s the vendors of social networking software products or services, or the founders of MySpace who sold it for US$580 million.
