Businesses behind social networking

Jonathan Bowers, May 17th 2007, 10:52AM

In the UK, many businesses are discovering the benefits of working with social media in order to build their brand. It is often seen as a leap of faith for a business to put its stall out on a site like MySpace or YouTube or Flickr. Managing directors are held back by the idea of an open community, a dialogue that removes control from their grasp. Many have accepted that blogging is a viable communications tool but social networking seems the province of the consumer.

But what about this environment, the social networking arena? Is it really as open a community as they suspect? Within 2 years three of the Internet's most popular social networking sites have been bought by three of the Internet's most powerful influences - MySpace by News Corp, YouTube by Google and Flickr by Yahoo!. A story this week regarding Icelandic photographer Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir, shows that acquisition by big business can change the open nature of social networking.

Rebekka discovered her photographs were being sold by a gallery and naturally, she complained. She also posted her situation on Flickr - a site where she has built many relationships. The news spread and by the end of the first day it had appeared on Slashdot and over 100,000 people had viewed her Flickr post. Then, it and the 450 comments of support, were gone. Removed by the management.

Many say that this suppression of speech would not have happened before Yahoo's involvement. While I think that it is totally against the ethos of such a site to censor in this way, I do wonder if this style will appeal more to the MD's who currently hold back.

It is unlikely however to enthuse the creative teams who champion social networking to those managers.

Tags: censorship, socialnetworking
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Politics and social networking

Jonathan Bowers, March 23rd 2007, 10:59AM

If anyone still needs convincing that politics can feed its message through social networking then they only need to look at the battle going on between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

MySpace has created a section called Impact in the last week to encourage closer ties between the American Presidential candidates and it's users. Similarly YouTube's most linked to video this week is called One Voice and has been made in support of Obama, mashing up George Orwells 1984 with a speech by Hillary Clinton.

A few weeks ago at a presentation, somebody asked me the question - is there room in online PR for guerrilla tactics. This shows clearly that there are new unconventional channels through which to deliver your message to a whole new audience and with over 2 million viewing of the video on YouTube it difficult to argue that it's not a valuable piece of campaigning.

Tags: politics, socialnetworking
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Revenue drives difficult decisions

Jonathan Bowers, August 22nd 2006, 9:55AM

The Internet is driven by the need to monetise, that's a given, but as the fastest growing industry in the world it seems to work much faster than any other.

Just as articles spring up on the Internet about the gap between social networking sites and brand advertising the solutions also start to present themselves.

It's interesting that while articles like 'Pairing the Odd Couple' look to the brand managers to access the way forward, the actual steps are being taken by those who are likely to benefit massively - the social networking sites. YouTube's decision to create defined areas is guided by the desire to attract advertising from brand builders determined to achieve relevant environments for their images.

Similar to the content producers versus connectivity providers argument, there will always be a solution that brings greater wealth to both parties.

However, the world's traditional content producers need to start to work at the rate of the Internet entrepreneurs such as YouTube and MySpace if they want to stay on top of the viewers when the big switch to Online TV happens.

Tags: advertising, socialnetworking
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New media is the way forward for PR

Jonathan Bowers, July 10th 2006, 10:09AM

The CIPR Northern conference last Thursday was full of great speakers and new ideas for the PR community - and the most resounding gong was for blogging and the new media techniques.

The new media in this case is the myriad of ways that we can use the Internet to reach all our stakeholders and customers and every single session included at least a passing glance to how we must change our thinking to incorporate the Net.

I was there producing a podcast for the conference, which I have been editing over the last few days. It will be online by tomorrow and I'll include a link to it as soon as possible. It gives a flavour of the event and you'll see just how prominent blogging and the Internet are.

In particular, the keynote speakers looked at the effect of social networking and the globalisation of information and stories.

More news on this soon...

Tags: blogging, cipr, communication, socialnetworking
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Unsure about Squidoo

Jonathan Bowers, June 27th 2006, 2:04PM

I've taken an interest in the concept of Squidoo. It's an amalgamation of many of the Net's newest ideas. Something of a social networking site, a wiki, a blog community...

Users can create a lens, which is a simple web page that discusses one particular topic. And we all know that there are potentially millions of topics. It is being advertised as a marketing opportunity for individuals and businesses to promote information about a topic and then drive traffic to their own site. And there are signs that it is working

Behind the site is Seth Godin American marketer and writer of All Marketers are Liars. Seth promotes the feel good factor of marketing as well as an authentic approach to communication and he combines both in Squidoo.

The site allows you to post links to appropriate products on etail sites such as Amazon, eBay and Cafe Press and you can raise revenue from this either for yourself or charity. Each page is also sandwiched by Google Ads top and bottom. So the money raising potential is there and as each page concentrates on a particular topic, Google has an easy job to make the ads relevant to the audience.

On the downside, this kind of set-up seems open to abuse from people whose sole aim is to increase their links on the web. I believe it will have to be carefully administrated to make sure that the potency of the information is not diluted, because if that happens the community’s appeal may wane.

I am thinking of my own lens though...

Tags: socialnetworking, squidoo
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