John Pospisil

Everyone seems to launching social networking sites at the moment – and it’s not just Microsoft with its Live Spaces site. It’s getting to the stage where if you were backing one of these new sites you must be getting worried that the social networking arena is getting a little crowded.

Here’s a run down of a few other sites that have made announcements in this past week.

Fanpop is a new social networking site that allows fans of TV shows, movies, people and web sites to create social portals or “spots” devoted to the object of their desire. These spots contain blogs, headlines, forums, and links to other web sites. If you like a “spot” you can become a “fan”.

Adoptt is another generic-looking MySpace-clone that touts itself as a “revolutionizing social networking platform”. Adoptt describes itself as a “community of online friends, diaries and journals”, which Adoptt seems to think that this is somehow revolutionary. Somebody better tell the folks at Adoptt that it’s not the first site to be offering social networking functionality.

Last, but not least, there’s a new social networking site for Hare Krishna devotees. KrishnaFriends is designed to help devotees from all other the world meet each other and “connect … in a variety of ways”.

While it’s good to see all this activity, it’s starting to remind me the dot.com boom days when everyone (and their dog, and their fish) was launching web sites that were going to change the world. With MySpace such as an established player, and with sites such as Friendster, Bebo and Facebook already competing in this market, you’ve got to wonder how much room there is for all these new players.

People (even young people) only have so many hours each day, and can only commit their time and energy to limited number of social networking platforms. And of course there are only a finite number of advertising dollars to go around to fund all of these sites

At the moment we’re hearing about new launches, but no doubt, in due course, we’ll start hearing about closures.

Microsoft finally released its social networking site, Windows Live Spaces, during the past week. Well actually it’s an upgrade of its MSN spaces web site, and it allows you to create a web site, start a blog, post photos, and build a network of contacts. Sound familiar?

 

Live Spaces is free to the end user, and is paid for by advertising, which Microsoft says is “critical to driving growth for the company.”

Well what you can you say? Here’s another example of Microsoft using its considerable muscle to try to dominate a new market. And how interesting that despite its considerable resources, so far Microsoft’s social networking effort is simply a case of copying the real innovators.

Sure a Microsoft can create a slick social networking new site, but can it create a cool one?

A company selling nutritional and natural food products emailed me recently wanting to know how to market its products using MySpace. It’s a topic that a number of companies and individuals are probably thinking about, so I thought it would be useful to put some key points down in a blog.

First, you need to have a marketing strategy in place, so that means covering off the old 4Ps  – product, price, place and promotion. You need a product that meets the needs of your customers, at a price the intended customers a willing to pay, available at the right place, at the right time, in the right quantities. And of course you need some way of informing your intended customers about what you have to offer.

Second, MySpace is not a marketing silver bullet. It won’t solve all your marketing woes, though you may choose to use it as part of your integrated marketing toolkit, ie alongside your other marketing activity.

Third, you need to ask yourself what do you want from MySpace? If you simply want to develop an online advertising campaign than you are probably better off contacting MySpace’s advertising department. Make sure you have reasonable advertising budget.

However, I suspect that many people wanting to use MySpace for marketing purposes actually don’t want to go through the official channel (ie they don’t want to spend money directly with MySpace), and in fact they want to use MySpace for guerilla marketing. That’s OK, though it does mean you need to do a lot of the hard work yourself.

Probably the best way to use MySpace for guerilla marketing is to first set up a profile about the product or service you want to sell. It needs to be a cool profile; preferably one that is more than just the standard template — though I have seen some standard templates used quite well.

The second step is to segment your market, and then identify profiles that match the profile of your target market. Luckily, MySpace’s browse function makes this quite straight forward, though it will take time to develop a list of suitable prospects.

The third step is to make “friends” with your list of prospects; ie selecting “add to friends” from each prospect’s profile. Because all each prospect will see when they get your friends invitation is a photo of you with a link back to your profile, you need to be very thoughtful about how you set up your profile in the first place. There’s already a lot of Spam on MySpace, and most MySpace members will refuse to be your friend if you come across as yet another peddler of questionable merchandise (and there are many of these on MySpace).

Once you have created a list of “friends” who are interested in your products, there are a number of ways that you can than communicate with them — such as through bulletins, messages, or comments.

There are a number of online services that automate this process, and I’ll talk about them in a future post, but be aware that there are some issues you need to consider before signing up. In future posts I’ll also provide further advice on social marketing, and how to do it in an ethical way. I’ll also look at the official marketing services offered by MySpace.

If you have any experiences you’d like to share, or have an opinion, please go ahead and leave a comment.

 John Pospisil

I’ve found a more fitting URL for this blog, where I am continuing this blog. Please come over to:

http://www.cogentinsights.com

My email address john@pospisil.com.au is still my primary email address.

I’ve had a couple of questions from readers asking what the URL is of the Australian version of MySpace.

If you’re in Australia, you’re automatically taken to the Australian version of MySpace when you visit http://www.myspace.com

If you’re not in Australia, you can visit the Australian site by going here http://au.myspace.com/

A couple of New York teenagers have been taken into custody after attempting to extort $US150,000 from MySpace.com.

According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald the teenagers were thrown off MySpace for hacking into other users’ accounts. The pair then threatened to distribute information about how to hack into MySpace if they were not paid the money by MySpace.com.

The pair were taken into custody by undercover police officers posing as MySpace employees. They were each charged with sending a threatening letter, attempted extortion, and illegal computer access. Bail was set at $US35,000.

The pair are face up to four years in prison if convicted.

 

As my book “Hacking MySpace” gets closer to release I’ve been monitoring web and blog references to it using Google and Technorati.

Despite its August 2006 release, the book appeared on Amazon and other online book shops in February, where it can be preordered.

Now it has made a proper debut into the Blogosphere (not counting here Cogent Insights) at Hollywood 2020.

It’ll be interesting to see what kind of Blogosphere “chatter” the book will generate, and what impact this will have on its popularity (or otherwise).

If the Blogosphere is a means to bring the creators of products (like me with “Hacking MySpace”) closer to consumers (readers, in this case), perhaps the next few months will provide an opportunity for me and readers of this blog to learn more about how this dynamic works in practice.

Google has added video capabilities to its AdSense advertising network, according to a report in the Advertising Age. Video ads can now be placed on web sites that currently display Google graphical ads. The videos ads are static when first shown, and the user needs to press a play button to actually activate the videos.

Google is rapidly becoming the Microsoft of the Internet (irony intended); what pie doesn’t it have its finger in? Mind you, it’s a bit hard to be too critical, since Google does such a good job with most of the things it does.

Well it almost killed me, but last week I finished the manuscript for my fourth book Hacking MySpace : Mods and Customizations to make MySpace Your Space and got it to my editor, Rosanne, at Wiley Publishing, more or less on time.

I signed the contract to write the book in late December 2005, and until last week, I felt like I spent of all my waking life behind a computer (whether it was writing the book, or keeping my other ventures on track).

It’s been a really interesting experience. I’ve immersed myself in the world of social networking, and met some very interesting and talented people on MySpace. I also updated my HTML and CSS skills, which I didn’t think I would ever have cause to use again.

When you’re working on a 350 page book you sometimes wonder whether you’ll ever get it finished. But now that the edited chapters are starting to come back to from Rosanne, I’m starting to get the sense that, hey, this is actually happening. Also the fact that you can preorder the book from Amazon has dispelled any doubts I might have had.
It seems quite bizzare, but this experience seems to demonstrate that it’s easier for Australian writers to get published in the US than it is in Australia. My first three books were published by CHOICE Books (part of the Australian Consumers’ Association), where I was a journalist and editor (though that feels like a long time ago now). At the beginning of 2005 I started to get a hankering to do another book, and I got in touch with my old publisher Richard, who at the time had already left CHOICE Books.

Richard was quite pessemistic about my chances of finding a publisher. CHOICE Books had been downsized to almost nothing and was not taking on any new projects. He said that the publishing industry had really tightened up and unless I was famous or had an simply amazing idea I didn’t have a chance of getting published again – despite the fact that I had a proven track record. He did mention a couple of publishers he thought I should call. I pitched a couple of ideas to these contacts, but they didn’t go anywhere.

A few months later I was talking to Andrew Parsons about his GameParents web site. He had written a computer book for a US publisher, and he kindly put me in touch with his agent, Laura, in the US. I got in touch with her, told her about my ideas, and she asked me to put together some proposals. While there was some interest in the concepts – a book on vintage computers and another on using MBA business models and tools in small business – they didn’t get off the ground.

At that point it seemed to me that my career as an author was over, and I decided to put the whole book writing idea on hold. Then, in October last year, out of nowhere, Laura dropped me an email, inviting me to put together a proposal about Hacking MySpace for a major publisher. I put together what i thought was a pretty decent proposal, and before I knew it, I was signing a contract.
Sometimes opportunities come when you least expect them.