Social networks

Social networks, and marketing

Courtesy of emarketer.com, a review of marketing and social networks.

The main message is that that social networks have become mainstream over the last year, and are now an embedded feature of online.

Piper Jaffray sum it up;
“We believe social networking sites are not only one of the fastest growing web destinations, but also they have reached a critical mass where they cannot be dismissed as fads and instead have become a permanent part of the fabric of web applications.” —Piper Jaffray’s “Silk Road” commentary, June 5, 2006″

Emarketer lay out three types of social network sites;

1) Specialsed social network sites, eg MySpace, Facebook
2) Sites that include social networking as part of other activities, eg MSN, Yahoo
3) Specialised verticals, eg Linkedin, Fuzzter, Joga

Consider Rupert Murdochs comment, bearing in mind he paid 100’s of millions of dollars for MySpace;

“God knows what we’re going to do with MySpace.” —News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch in Wired, July 2006

EMarketer nicely lay out the marketing side of this phenmenon;

– Before the Internet, marketers followed the old broadcast model of one-to-many.
– In the early days of Internet marketing,… one-to-one with consumers, email, targeted banner ads and search advertising.
– Social networking, deliver a brand message to one person and that person can choose to send it on to other friends. One-to-one marketing becomes “one-to-one-to-many.”

Relevance to Bankwatch:

Social networks are probably in their infancy. They will get polluted by social advertising spam. But technology will evolve and the networks will evolve. This is too strong a presence to ignore, and learning won’t come from watching on the sidelines.

4 thoughts on “Social networks, and marketing”

  1. Prediction: Myspace will fall from the Top Ten visited websites within 3 months, active membership (active within one week) will plummet 50% within 1 year, and within 2 years they will be sold at a loss by News Corp. as a second tier player in the specialized alternative music social networking category. Why? They fail to realize that handling volume must be their #1 priority. They’ve been teetering for some time under the weight of visitors, with increasingly slow page views, and the failure attributed to power failure was inexcusable but expected. They will likely erase profiles or other user content/history due to technical errors or virus assault, causing massive defection to competing social networking sites. These mistakes will combine with their marketing ignorance – namely their unwillingness out of greed to settle for just a content segment (music) or demo segment (14-24 years old) of the social networking space – to marginalize them, however they will always be remembered as the category pioneers and provide a case study in how to lose market leadership for business school students for years to come.

  2. Vancity, Canada’s largest credit union, just launched a social networking site of their own. Rather than the “guess what class I skipped at school today. p.s. my band rocked the prom” myspace stuff, Vancity’s site, changeeverything.ca, is built around community activism and serious social issues affecting the Vancouver community.

    It’s worth a look as a model of how financial institutions can enter the realm of social media and at the same time maintain their professionalism.

  3. Thanks Trey. changeeverything.ca seems interesting. Someone noted a couple of months back that there as an ad for someone to run this for Vancity, on Craigslist. Even though its somewhat similar to HSBC yourpointofview.com, its a great start. And its particulalry relevant that they sought someone on Craigslist to di it. That suggests someone at Vancity gets it.

    I am still intrigued that these two banks are using different URL’s than their main brand. It could be a low risk way of starting, but harder to make the connection. It will be interesting to watch this space develop for banks.

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