Facebook, MySpace Aren't Making The Marketing Cut

While chief marketing officers are intrigued by social networking sites Facebook and MySpace as potential marketing vehicles, actually using them is another matter, according to the results of a new survey.

More than one quarter (27%) of consumer and B-to-B chief marketing executives surveyed online in late October by GfK Roper Public Relations and Media for marketing services firm Epsilon identified social networking and word of mouth as the tools they would most like to introduce to their marketing mix to compensate for anticipated budget cuts--ahead of all other traditional or digital marketing channels.

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Social Networks Not Ready for Business?

Social networks like Facebook and MySpace have become enormously popular among consumers. But are businesses really prepared to embrace them?

Many businesses aren't ready to throw open their networks to Web 2.0 traffic unless it meets certain thresholds.

So what are these thresholds?

Social Networking Services Growing, Advertising Not So Much

The use of social networking sites will continue to grow, but advertising will not necessarily expand along with it, according to market research firm IDC.

Framingham, Mass.-based IDC says in a new study that social networks will face slow ad sales until they can get users to do more than just keep up with friends. That's because members of social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo tend to click on ads less than the U.S. Internet users overall.

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LinkedIn CEO Touts Growth Of Network

The San Francisco Chronicle sat down with LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye to discuss the professional social network's fortunes in 2008. At last count, LinkedIn was the fourth largest social networking site, behind MySpace, Facebook and Classmates.com. It is also the fourth fastest growing social network, according to the Chronicle report, behind Twitter, Tagged.com and Ning, with membership of 30 million. The private company is expected to rake in $100 million in ad revenue in 2008, up from $10 million at the end of 2006. In June, LinkedIn raised new capital valuing the firm at $1 billion.

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TIME's 10 Social Networking Apps

Time put together its year-end top ten list of social networking apps. If I wasn't too busy working on my top ten list of Dio duets I want to hear, I'd put together my own list.

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A Really Poor Use of Facebook Connect?

Over at Socialized, JC Penney gets ripped for its Facebook Connect application, which allows visitors to easily put their Facebook boyfriends (or anybody else) in the "Doghouse".

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Moms on 3 Major SocNets Call Profiles 'Extensions of Themselves'

Research from Lucid Marketing shows that Cafemom members have a much stronger affinity there than they do with Facebook and MySpace, that they are more likely to say they are "addicted" to their network of choice, and more apt to say they greatly value the connections, support and shared experiences with other moms they meet there.

Lucid also provides a free report: Social Media & Moms, ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS Edition

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Dear Facebook: Don’t Forget the Marketers

Alisa Leonard-Hansen of iCrossing pens an open letter to Facebook:

With speculation around how you should monetize mostly a topic of conversation within the tech community, it always surprises me that a marketing perspective isn’t thrown into the mix. After all, it’s marketing dollars that you (and just about every other online entity) are relying on. So, taking a digital marketing perspective, I thought I’d throw a few thoughts into the discussion.

Her thoughts

Marketers Turn To Social Media As Recession Looms

More and more marketers are harnessing the power of social media, using blogs, viral videos, and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and Digg to reach consumers. According to Reuters, the common denominator in their advertising efforts is the high level of engagement that the ads demand from consumers.

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Facebook Attempts To Make More Money

Two things are going on over at Facebook. First, the social network has created additional ad inventory for sale on their sidebar. Secondly, they launched their Application Verification Program.

What does this all mean?

Social Networks Site Usage in 2008

Jeremiah Owyang conveniently collects numbers (visitors, members, page views and more) for select networks, including Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

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Can Social Networks Predict What You'll Buy?

Those stalking the social-networking field are betting that birds of a feather don't just flock together -- they buy together too.

While the merits of advertising on social networks are still debatable, there's emerging evidence that mapping the online relationships among consumers -- creating so-called social graphs -- can be just as valuable as traditional targeting and segmentation in predicting how people will respond to marketing messages.

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Consumers Open to SocNet Shopping

Nearly one-third (30%) of online consumers say special sales and exclusive products would make them consider shopping on social networks, and 27% say viewing comments about items for sale would similarly encourage them.

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Social Networks Are Better Seen Than Heard

Webbr was built from the ground-up to be a visual and interactive social experience. The visualizer (pictured above) is your window in the webbr social world. You can see the connections between people, their interests, their friends and their networks.

See a demo here

Sounds much better than Internet Shout, which is a voice-based social network.

P&G Digital Guru Not Sure Marketers Belong on Facebook

Social networks may never find the ad dollars they're hunting for because they don't really have a right to them, said Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co., at a Nov. 15 forum on digital media.

"I have a reaction to that as a consumer advocate and an advertiser," he said. "What in heaven's name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?"

He went on to apply a similar standard to the broader world of consumer-generated media. "I think when we call it 'consumer-generated media,' we're being predatory," he said. "Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren't trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. ... We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it."

While it's not a company policy, but rather a personal preference, Mr. McConnell said, "I really don't want to buy any more banner ads on Facebook."

That's not to say he believes P&G should end all involvement with Facebook. He cited Facebook applications as a potentially valuable vehicle for advertisers, one in which they can create an environment that's favorable for their brands and consumers alike.

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Social Networks - A Worldview

Oxyweb has created a world map of social networks.

MySpace Ads and the Big Leap

Certainly, there have been ways to leverage data inside social networks about people before last week. But MySpace Ads allows you to create, target and traffic an ad at the speed of...well...Google AdWords.

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Mercedes Intros 'Generation-Benz' Social Network

Mercedes-Benz USA wants an invited group of Gen Y netizens to open up about the brand. So it is running a social networking marketing program called Generation-Benz, intended to bring younger consumers into the brand while giving Mercedes insights about the 20-somethings.

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Vitamin Shoppe Launches Online Community

The Vitamin Shoppe has launched an online community including message boards and expert leaders giving health, wellness, and sports nutrition advice.

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Social Network Apps To Finally Monetize Within The Next Year

Today at OpenSocial’s first birthday event, a group of press, developers, and members of the OpenSocial team convened to discuss the future of the platform. Of the many topics discussed during the roundtable, perhaps the most pressing was the issue of monetization - many developers are simply unable to convert their users to a steady stream of revenue.

And while OpenSocial’s Director of Engineering David Glazer admitted that he didn’t know the answer, he predicted that within the next year we’ll see a standardized payment platform integrated into OpenSocial. And with that, we may start to see more of these applications transition into viable businesses.

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Live.com Goes Social

This morning the big news is that Live.com, Microsoft’s primary portal which was originally just a search engine has gone social, providing users with profiles and activity feeds of their friends’ latest activities. Users are automatically connected with any friends they have on Windows Live Messenger, which is by far the most popular instant messaging service worldwide.

With 268 million users using Windows Live Messenger, the company has access to around 16.7 percent of the world’s internet population. That’s more than double Facebook’s user base. It’s clear that social technology is becoming ubiquitous and this is one more step that emphasizes the trend. The largest news about the new site is news feed which imports user activities from around the web.

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Open Social: State Of The Union Presentation

It’s OpenSocial day today. It’s been roughly one year since the service launched to fight Facebook’s exploding platform product, and the main companies behind Opensocial are holding an all day press and developer event at MySpace’s San Francisco headquarters.

See what they saw

Facebook Announces New Advertising Metrics

Today Facebook sent an email out to their advertisers about three new types of Insights reports that will help advertisers understand how their advertisements are performing. The three new types are:

• “Responder Demographics” report - This report provides the aggregate age, gender, and geographic location of the users who have clicked on an ad.
• “Responder Profiles” report - This report provides psychographic information including common interests, favorite TV shows, movies, books, and music.
• “Advertising Performance” report - This report provides you with a downloadable version of existing ad metrics, as well as “a new section for performance data specific to” advertisements “that contained social actions, if applicable.”

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So What's Up With Bebo

Jeremiah Owyang knows. Here's an article from him regarding Dev Nite, Bebo's public courtship to startups and developers who make web applications on social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Hi5 (Examples: Vampires, Scrabulous, Superwall).

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Social networks Don't Always Encourage Engagement

Only 12% of adults would be more likely to click through marketing emails if they were linked to social networks, according to research by e-Dialog and YouGov.

The poll of over 1,900 adults found that 22% would be less likely to respond if the marketing email contained links to content such as video, microsites and social networks such as Facebook and YouTube.

Oy.

Facebook Tries to Woo Marketers

Despite its surging Internet audience, Facebook has yet to prove it can wring steady revenue out of advertisers. Now it's trying a new tactic to woo Madison Avenue. The Palo Alto, Calif., company is rolling out a new ad format called "engagement ads" that further blurs the line between marketing and social networking.

The new ads appear on the main screen when a person first logs in to Facebook. They prompt a user to do something within the ad, such as comment on a movie trailer or RSVP for the season finale of a TV show. If the user completes the action, such as adding Bravo TV's "Project Runway" show to a personal list of events, Facebook tries to get Bravo's ad in front of more eyeballs by sharing a notice about what the user has done with their friends.

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Dragging and dropping with MySpace

At MySpace, change is a gradual affair. News Corp’s online social network on Monday is introducingProfile 2.0, which it calls the “next step in iterative global site redesign, enabling millions of users to opt-in and customize the appearance of their profiles using an innovative new drag-and-drop user interface.”

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Pizza Hut Weds MP3s to Online Ordering Experience

Beginning today, users that make orders on PizzaHut.com can download 75 MP3s at no cost, courtesy of eMusic.

Free tracks come with an order of either the Pizza Mia, Tuscani Pasta, WingStreet Wings or any other Pizza Hut specials. The music has no digital rights management protection — meaning users can play them on any MP3 player or share them with friends.

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The Platforms: Google, Microsoft, Facebook And MySpace

Slide founder Max Levchin just kicked off a panel called “The Platform Advantage” at the Web 2.0 Summit. Participants include Google’s Vic Gundotra, Microsoft’s David Treadwill, MySpace’s Amit Kapur and Facebook’s Elliot Schrage.

The panel began with a general debate on exactly what a platform is, and how each of the companies play in the space. Kapur says a platform has to create an ecosystem that includes a core base of users, tools to build applications, and an advertising network to monetize the platform. Schrage says the Facebook platform is a place for users to interact, and for developers to take advantage of that social utility.

Here's what else they all had to say

How Nike's Social Network Sells to Runners

The Nike+ site is drawing hordes of runners, and its success may hold lessons for brand building on the Web. Since I get out of breath just lacing up my sneaks, I'll just give you the link.

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Facebook Connect: Coming Soon to a Site Near You?

Facebook Connect - the service that allows developers to access Facebook data from outside of the Facebook chrome - has been met with both cautious optimism and healthy skepticism. And with good reason. The service holds the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with social sites the Web over. At the same time, it gives Facebook access to a great deal of information about how users interact with other social sites.

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'MySpace Generation' Less Exposed to Online Ad Clutter

Young people between the ages of 2 and 17 experience the least amount of online advertising “clutter” on the internet, while online adults age 65+ are subjected to the most, according research from Nielson Online.

Since websites designed for children have little to no advertising, it is not surprising that the youngest Web visitors are typically exposed to a low level of advertising clutter, Nielsen said. But teens (age 12-17), the highest indexing age group on MySpace, also encounter relatively low clutter levels and are accustomed to less clutter than all adult age groups. This could potentially make them less tolerant of additional clutter than older adults.

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