Social networking - the overhype

The BBC waxes lyrical about social networking and Web 2.0:

The notion of Web 2.0, or an internet model where content is created and shared by users, has given birth to some of the most popular sites the internet has ever seen.

The trouble is, social networking has been at the heart at the internet from the early days.

Even newsgroups offered a form of social networking, and when Yahoo! and MSN began setting up their walled gardens, online communities were a key part of that.

In more independent areas, software such as vbulletin, phpbb, and other forum platforms have been offering the ability for users to create and share content with like-minded individuals.

In this regard, all that sites such as MySpace have down is increased the level of programming involved so that it’s easier for individual to share information with one another more easily.

The big question, though, is whether the supposed Web 2.0 growth has actually facillitated anything in terms of marketing and ROI so far.

The big answer is that so far, it hasn’t delivered much on either count.

On the internet conversion rates can be tracked and this is where you encounter a sudden of silence.

There’s such much hype about what Web 2.0 can deliver, and there’s plenty of interest in the supposed value of companies.

But what MySpace sold for, and what it could sell for now, are irrelevant.

The big issue that no marketing company is daring to address is the conversion from Web 2.0. And where answers exist, it’s suggested that Web 2.0 as a marketing audience is “inefficient” at best.

I think it’s pretty clear that both the advertising approach, and the context of social communities themselves, work against the generic “old style” marketing models that too many companies are looking to develop with.

Social communities are still badly untapped by marketing and advertising agencies - they look too much still to apply specific products to a generic market.

The issue here is targeting.

Product-specific marketing at generic audiences is no better than throwing money into TV advertising. Sure, it reaches a large audience, but how many are actually paying attention? The internet differs from TV for marketing purposes in that it’s much easier to lose user attention.

If you want to sell to a targeted market you need to market to a targeted audience.

What they should be doing is nurturing and developing relationships with online communities within their market niche - ie, not trying to target strata of consumers based on age/sex/etc - but instead targeting communities which have already built up around discussing the product market a company is involved with.

Sell DVD players? Then search for large online communities that focus on DVD technology and capture them. Sell music? Then capture the attention of established music forums with a direct advertising partnership.

So far the hype around Web 2.0 and similar continues to overlook targeting and conversions.

For these reasons I think we’ll soon find that unless marketing approaches are radically overhauled in approaching social networking, then we’ll find that after the hype has died down, the postscript on their development is not very flattering at all.