Seminar Examines Social Networking Phenomenon

The chair of the event, Torin Douglas asked the assembled panelists if they believed that social networking sites are here to stay or did they think that they are just a fad and, if they are here to stay, what this could mean for advertisers.

Greg Grimmer, managing director of Zed Media, differentiated between technology which enables a different type of leisure time, such as the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) Second Life, and technology which enables paid for marketing or paid for communications to become more effective, and he added that people must be careful to note that these are two very different things.

Grimmer said: “When you go to the cinema you watch a film for two hours and you watch an ad which is three minutes long and this doesn’t mean you’re exposed to commercial messages for two hours and its the same with online.

“I watch my kids online and actually the fact is that they might be online for two hours at a a time but they will not be exposed to any commercial messages at all because the sites they choose to go on will be ones like CBeebies or other kids oriented sites, they’re not exposed to commercial messaging at all. That’s their most screentime, they spend more time looking at a computer than they do at a TV or even console games these days.

“So I think we need to be really careful about confusing internet consumption with paid-for commercial message consumption.”

Blake Chandlee, director of UK Media Sales at Yahoo! UK & Ireland, began by talking about web 2.0, and offered a definition of it as, in essence, internet services that facilitate “collaboration and sharing”, making it clear that he feels social networking is just one aspect of this.

Chandlee said: “There are lots of examples of this, from blogs to podcasts to a variety of different forms and so i think ‘social networks’ is something we’ve come up with today, but after today i don’t know if it will have the same definition.

“I think the concept of social networks will continue to evolve. The brands, the form, the communities that are there will continue to evolve. You’re talking about audiences that will find a place.

“Web 2.0 is a transitional point in time, and the ability to share and collaborate with people all over the world, seamlessly in real time, with video, comments, ratings, is going to affect everything, all the way through the ecosystem.”

Chandlee then said that the earliest form of social networking site was eBay. He pointed out to the assembled delegates that the total exchange value between consumers on the US eBay was $13 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of 2006. He added: “that to me is the epitome of a social networking site. That is collaboration and sharing in a perfect form.”

Andrew Walmsley, co-founder of i-level, was excited about social networking but urged advertisers that they must use the medium to its fullest potential. He said: “I think this is one of the most interesting things to happen to the internet. There’s a hundred and 50 million odd people signed up to MySpace and a lot of people thought ‘this is fantastic, what a great advertising opportunity, we’ll run banners on it’, and of course, its a pretty crap advertising environment which is why its so cheap.

“What’s much more interesting is when you try and get involved in the conversation. There’s a whole area of debate going on about the interaction between people, so how can you start to develop things that either facilitate that conversation or participate with it, and in a way that adds value for people rather than riding roughshod over their sensibilities.

Walmsley noted that there has been a rise of consumer activism in Second Life because users are not happy with certain brands intruding into the game space.

He added: “There are all sorts of opportunities to get it badly wrong, which is entertaining for the rest of us, but what’s really interesting here is where there are opportunities to get involved.

He mentioned the MySpace page set up to promote the X-Men film, where hundred of thousands of people signed up to be friends. He said: “I find that quite extraordinary but it’s very interesting to see how they’ve managed to bring something of value to that community. So I think it can be very exciting and very challenging but not the immediate advertising environment.”