Scaling the Social Web

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Buying on Your Best Friend's Say

Using that metric, social networks MySpace and Facebook are not only among the Web's most popular, but they're also among the most valuable to advertisers. MySpace, the largest social network with 70 million-plus U.S. visitors, and Facebook, MySpace's closest U.S. competitor with 30-million-plus U.S. users, are among the top destinations, judging by time spent per user. On average, members spend more than three hours a month on those sites, according to Web measurement service comScore (SCOR). Not only that, but the same users keep coming back, to check in on pals, make new contacts, and tweak profiles to reflect changing interests, activities—even moods.

Engagement like that is paramount to marketers. Advertisers want to influence viewers to view a brand favorably or encourage users to buy a product. The more times an ad or product is shown, the better the chance that performance will improve. It also doesn't hurt if a user's social network has been similarly influenced by brand messages. "If your best friend says, 'Hey, these jeans are the best things I have ever seen,' you might just buy them," says John Squire, senior vice-president of products strategy at Coremetrics, a company that measures the effectiveness of ads.

Companies looking to foster user engagement and loyalty are turning to resources like Ning, a startup that helps Web publishers create social networks around their content. More than 100,000 sites have used Ning's tools to add their own networks. The sites range from a network of five family members sharing content and photos to large networks such as Playboy's site, rapper 50 Cent's Thisis50.com, and indiepublic, a social network for independent designers and artists. "We believe there is going to be a world in the not-too-distant future where there will be millions of social networks in every conceivable language for every conceivable community," says Gina Bianchini, who founded Ning with Marc Andreessen and now serves as its CEO.

Media Gets into the Act

This month, news and media-sharing site Digg unleashed a host of social networking features aimed at giving more users a compelling reason to spend time on Digg's site. The tools let users set up more detailed profile pages and share stories with specified like-minded friends. More socializing tools are on the way (BusinessWeek, 9/19/07). "This enhancement of our social networking features will bring users in," says Digg CEO Jay Adelson. "Then there is another side effect, that they go and get their friends and pull them into it."

Similarly, eBay is developing a section of its site, called "neighborhoods," that functions like a social network around shopping. Neighborhoods will enable users to find others with similar interests, say in coin collecting or Boston Red Sox memorabilia, and form communities around those hobbies (BusinessWeek, 9/19/07).

Traditional print publications are also feeling the pressure. In March, Gannett's (GCI) USA Today began letting users set up profiles. It also added a community section and user-comment boxes beneath every story. Dow Jones' (DJ) MarketWatch.com also has launched a community feature where users can create profiles, comment on stories, and highlight their favorite articles.

A Case of Social Network Fatigue

But at what stage will users get fed up with all the networking? In a blog post concerning Y! Mash's launch this month, John Battelle, founder of online marketing-services company Federated Media Publishing, said he has SNF—social network fatigue. "The biggest issue with any application that asks you to declare your social graph—your friends and who you are interested in knowing even if you don't know them yet—is it is a fair amount of work," says Battelle. "Plus, it asks you to extend yourself socially and both those things can get fatiguing."

Some Digg users had a similar response to the company's launch of new social networking features. Said one user who goes by the handle "canwediggit" on Digg's messageboards: "I'm sick and tired of social networks" (BusinessWeek, 8/15/07).

Yet it's that very sense of frustration with social networks that's spurring on the newbies. A user who's had it with the requests to connect from LinkedIn or the friend invitations from fellow Facebookers may be all the more likely to retreat to a smaller, more specialized circle of fellow activists who like their MTV.

All the better if the upstart makes it easy to import a list of friends. "The easier it is to carry your social network with you and just plug it in somewhere without having to redo [all the connections], the better," Battelle says. "If I can go and plug into a vertical around politics and bring that network with me, that is going to be quite useful."

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Holahan is a writer for BusinessWeek.com in New York.