Social Networking Meets the Mainstream

Datamation content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

SAN FRANCISCO — Business has gotten the message: Pay attention to
social media, and begin to figure it out. The Social Networking
Conference, held Thursday and Friday this week in San Francisco, aims to help
them figure out how to do it.

As usual, conference speakers emphasized authenticity, empowering
users and creating a good experience for end-users. Mark Brooks, a
consultant on Internet dating and social networking, and editor of
Social Networking Watch, told the audience, “MySpace got the model
really right. It allowed people to connect on their point of passion,
empowered them to create absolutely horrible Web pages. They were
crazy pages –but they were their pages.”

According to Brooks, advertising remains the biggest source of
revenue for the industry. The $1 billion ad spend this year is
expected to exceed $4 billion by 2011, Brooks said. “I think there’s
a lot of money in niche sites, where advertisers can find people with
one strong interest,” he said.

The mobile social applications sector South Korea is the top user
of social networking sites, with 66 percent of its citizens having
used one; the United States is fifth in such usage, Brooks said. In
the mobile world, the biggest action is still sending and receiving
photos or videos, with 23 percent in the United States and 26 percent
globally sharing their media this way. “We’ve hardly scratched the
surface with mobile social networking, however,” Brooks told the audience.

MySpace and Facebook are the fastest growing in terms of mobile
traffic trends. MySpace expects half its traffic to be mobile in the
future, thanks to its deals with 23 carriers in 13 countries to date.

Businesses should take a strategic approach when moving into social
media, according to Steve Ennen, director of business development for
Neighborhood America, a provider of software as a service that lets
companies build online and mobile social networks. “Understand not
just the toolbox but the goals,” he told the conference audience.

Defining success

Companies also need to define the metrics for success. “As a brand
owner you can’t control the message, but you can control the
environment,” he said. “Managing the community to facilitate the
conversation is the best way.”

Fat bellies

“It’s a community based on, of all things, fat bellies,” Ennis
said. “It’s a fascinating phenomenon.” The comments are encouraging,
showing that a strong community will police itself, he said. The
24,000 members have generated more than $500,000 in new ad revenue.

At perhaps the other end of the spectrum, the United States Air Force is using social media extensively, despite
some cultural barriers. The military must balance information
dissemination and security issues, but it’s working that out. For example, Air Force personnel
use chat extensively via a PC-based application. Each person is
allowed a limited amount of friends with whom to chat, and the
application, developed by Roundarch, is secure.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com.