Web 2.0: What’s in it for you?
Social networks give companies alternative ways to capture the volatile teenage market. The hundred-million profiles that teenagers created on MySpace, the network with the highest volume of traffic so far, and similar sites such as Facebook and the UK-based Bebo, proved too attractive for film and recording studios, mobile phone companies, and publishing firms. News Corp.’s purchase of MySpace in 2005 for $585 million marked the new age of consolidated mass media.
Social networks are venues for building relationships, sharing content and establishing online identities, especially for the youth, according to Danah Boyd, a Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The way they personalize their profile pages provide marketers with ideas on what tickle their fancies; their choices of profile widgets, music, movies, and a host of other “apps” say something about their interests or what they think is cool.
When they realized the possibilities of online social networks, big businesses followed suit. Adidas, Motorola, and Nike eventually embraced online social networks as marketing platforms. Now, there are emerging niche social networks that cater to specific age groups, professions, and interests.
The popularity of blogging has also reached the ranks of CEOs. SUN’s CEO, Jeffrey Schwartz, Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, and Jupiter Media’s Alan Meckler are some of the celebrated CEO bloggers who share insights about their respective enterprises. Comments, link backs and reactions on subsequent blogs set the discussion wheel in motion and allow for new perspectives to be included in the exchange. Blogging’s conversational tone trumps the marketing buzz-laden copy of a print ad on the Sunday paper. Reactions are immediate and the exchange spirals as more authors take a stab on a subject.
Recently, PR agents have added bloggers to the long list of publishers that they depend on to create buzz for their clients. Promoting a brand is not limited anymore to traditional media practitioners, but is now extended to the average Jane who publishes her ideas faster than most traditional media. And she is not alone. According to Technorati in its “State of the Live Web” report released last April, there are about 70 million web logs or 120,000 new ones created everyday at the rate of 1 blog every 1.4 seconds.
Steve Rubel, author of the blog Micro Persuasion, says that conventional marketing has seen its glory days of forcing mass media messages into the minds of the buying public. Instead, conversational marketing gives a better way for large and small companies to engage their markets in on-going dialogues. The Long Tail--an e-business model which describes the way hard-to-find items sold on retail Web sites can sell in cumulatively greater volumes than the few popular items distributed at large volumes--now applies to both the small numbers of goods that find their way to particular groups of buyers, as well as the small voices on the Web.
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