Social Networking Sites: Can They Live Up To The Hype?

Posted By Hollis Thomases on Feb 19th, 2004

What? You don’t belong to Orkut?! What exactly is Orkut? A type of killer whale? Orkut and its cousins Meetup, Friendster, LinkedIn and Ryze are social networking sites, an extension of sites dedicated solely to online dating. Social networking sites focus on making connections, whether they be of a business, friendship or romantic nature. These sites are the new millenium’s version of the Breck commercial (for those of you who remember): “you tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on and so on and so on…” Social networking sites have potential in not only being a way to meet people, but also to indirectly market sites through the members’ affiliations, preferences, and professions.

Social networking, although it has been around awhile, seems to be the latest Internet rage. Friendster, one of the original social networking sites, now finds itself in the company of mammoths such as Google (through its relation to Orkut) and Lycos, who is getting out of the search game altogether to pursue revenues instead from social networking and subscription services.

Social networking sites, especially the newer ones, are nipping at the tails of the dating and business niche sites. According to a November 2003 release from Nielsen/NetRatings, Friendster had approximately one million people spend an average of 35 minutes on its site. That much of a user’s time is nothing to scoff at.

Comparing Social Networking Sites

Orkut – Developed by namesake Orkut Buyokkokten, a Google software engineer, during personal time allowed to him through his employer, Orkut is not currently a part of Google’s product portfolio, though some day it may be.

To become an Orkut member, one has to be invited by another member. Although feeling a little “high schoolish,” absence from Orkut doesn’t last too long. Eventually, one of your acquaintenances is sure to join and, in turn, invite you to join as well. Once invited, you must fill out a form where you can choose to reveal some very detailed information about yourself: your birthday, interests, geographic location, marital status, etc. You can even post a picture of yourself. From there, you can ask your friends to join and maybe make some new ones too. As of now, Orkut has no ads nor are there any dues to join. So far, the site is strictly someone’s labor of love.

Friendster – Like with Orkut, when joining Friendster you are asked to answer some basic questions, though Friendster’s questions are not so detailed as Orkut’s. Friendster lives up to its name — it is more of a “meet market” for people actively seeking to meet others rather than to simply network. Friendster does display advertisements and sponsored links.

Tickle – Tickle, formerly known as eMode, is a site with multiple social offerings: networking, matchmaking, groups and test results. Parts of Tickle are free while other parts come with a subscription fee and Tickle does serve advertising. With over 18 million members already, Tickle is a social networking force to be reckoned with.

LinkedIn – LinkedIn presents itself as “an online service helping professionals find and connect with one another more effectively.” LinkedIn’s registration form more resembles a resume than a social application, asking for such information as current/most recent job position, job industry, past experience, and professional overview. You can join LinkedIn through invitation or by starting a network of your own.

Through LinkedIn, both employers and potential employees can make connections. For example, I can easily view both prospects and contacts in the marketing/advertising industry — there are currently 900+ users in the field. Also, your friends and colleagues belonging to the club may share their own endorsements or references in your profile, enhancing the level of trust potential networking partners may have in you and/or your offer. There is currently no fee for LinkedIn while it is in its beta version.

Ryze – Ryze is another business networking site that does not require an invitation to join. A Ryze member’s personal page can contain skills and characteristics information (“What I Have” and “What I Want”). Be careful what you wish for, however. As part of our experiment, within two days of joining Ryze, we were inundated with personal messages and invitations from other Ryze users, mainly salespeople trying to sell us stuff.

MeetUp – Thanks to the current Democratic primary race, MeetUp has received a lot of attention and activity. MeetUp facilitates off-line social network more so than the web-based kind. Visitors to MeetUp, which currently has over one million members, can find a topic of interest and then see if there is a meet-up set to take place in their geographic area. Meet-ups are as diverse as knitting, Harry Potter, and Howard Dean supporters.

Social Networking from a Marketer’s Perspective

If most of these sites are free, how are they supporting themselves? The key lies in data, my friend.

In Orkut’s term of agreements there is a statement saying that any information you provide on Orkut is their property. Think about this a moment: you fill in nifty fields with your personal information and interests and you can even join sub-groups about certain interests. This is the kind of holy grail of information highly coveted by advertisers. Isn’t it possible that in the near future, Orkut will display ads very targeted towards group or even personal interests?

To get an idea of how much your personal information is worth to advertisers, try out the Swipe Marketing Data Value Calculator link located at the bottom of this article.

Orkut may also be another boom for Google’s contextually targeted AdWords/AdSense text ads. Friendster already understands the value of marketing and advertising with banner ads displayed on multiple pages. And because of its popularity and success, MeetUp is already receiving requests from advertisers who want to offer their services and space for the meet-ups.

And although most of these networks are free, many of them offer upgraded packages for their overly committed members. MeetUp makes some of its profits by doing so. Ryze does and soon Tickle will charge fees for “additional communicating” — for nominal fees, this is the perfect opportunity for small advertisers and home-based businesses to post their specials on just about anything.

Lycos is setting up a paid advertising model similar to Friendster hoping to generate more revenues from contextual ads like Google AdWords on their sites. Now, it even looks as though popular matchmaking services like Yahoo Personals and Match.com will be implementing a networking service to their programs.

From the flurry of activity, it looks as though there’s gold in them there hills…or will it prove to be fool’s gold?