The beginning of monetization of social media

It’s not uncommon at my house for us to have our laptops out while we watch TV.  Sometimes we are working, or surfing, or IMing.  When there is a cool show on we can immediately get the back story.  We are using the internet with TV in ways that haven’t clearly been mapped out or capitalized on yet.  Is this the start of capitalization of the SN scene?

Traditional television is struggling to keep its audience, and the internet is maturing.  The two are converging on the us the consumer. Mashable featured an article today about Big Brother Australia.  It seems the producers of the show have begun how to realize the power of social networking in attracting audiences AND in engaging them. 

Producers of BBAU (as they call it) are setting up a Facebook page.  I’ll speculate that their intention is to make the members of that group to feel like they have ‘an edge’ over regular viewers of the show.  Being a part of the FB group will allow members to watch news feeds.  MySpace will be used for all of their video hosting needs.  BBAU is also expanding their own website to include viewer generated content, and to expand the blogging about the show. 

The future of television, interactive television and web based television is upon us.  I hope the opportunity to improve what we are watching isn’t wasted.

 

The social networking scene – Development, Marketing and Monetization

So I have had some time to put my web 2.0 experience as the primary researcher, writer (Respectance Blog), and host of Respectance- a Silicon Valley venture capital funded social networking site into perspective.  Here are some of my thoughts on the development, marketing and monetization of such a site.

 As much as the internet pundits hate to acknowledge it, social networking is within the context of the general population, still a niche activity.  General use of social networks is growing daily as broad band and viral penetration continues.  Within the realm of Social Networking there are many ‘flavours‘. There are the big boys FaceBook and myspace, and then there are the myriad of niche sites such as Respectance.  There is something for everyone, but how does any one company find the customers that they need?

Through honest and frank web evangelism I brought our first thousands of members on board.  It was not easy, death and grieving is a taboo subject, to reach out and convince people to share their visceral feelings in order to produce (for our purposes) genuine high value content.  Market research was extensive, design and feel of the site crucial to attracting the target demographic (women 25-50), and of course writing things that people are interested in hearing about in a concise and easy manner.

I ran our SEM campaigns and found that SEM was a great way to bring people in.  Unfortuantely for a startup it’s also a great way to ’send money out’.  The cost/benefit of any SEM campaign must be constantly analysed and CTRs aren’t necessarily the way to measure success.  It may allow you to count the people in the door, but did they stay long enough to have the ‘cup of coffee’?

While I was there we tried many marketing campaigns based on good will agreements with non-profits, attempting penetration of chat rooms, and forums.  Some of the campaigns were successful, many weren’t.  Time lines were tight, budget tight, staffing few.  New people came and brought ideas.  There isn’t a marketing ‘how to’ manual out there yet for this kind of marketing.  What people like, what catches on, it’s all still a very elusive target. 

There is a critical mass of members that any social networking site must have in order to use any of the ‘no fee for service’ monetization models.  Even then it seems making money is not at all easy.