Social networking site creators and platform providers explain why this new media category is here to stay, and how marketers can use it to their advantage.

In late 2005, the single social networking site MySpace delivered more web pages in a single month than Google, and has been growing rapidly since. It is one of dozens of sites and millions of blogs that are growing pageviews at a massive rate.

This new media category, social networking (which includes blogging too), is a conundrum for marketers. The pages are not generated by professional journalists, but by the users themselves: the dreaded User Generated Content. The engagement of users with the sites is participatory, unlike traditional ‘receive only’ media. The involvement of users with the site, whether publishing or viewing, is staggeringly higher than the involvement with traditional media sites. Most important, the participants are becoming harder and harder to reach with traditional media, and reject traditional advertising approaches.

Listen to the creators and platform providers and get a better understanding of why this new media category won’t go away, why it must be reckoned with, what the users of these sites are expecting, and how marketers can themselves engage their brands productively in these new environments.

GET THE PODCAST

• [RSS] Add the iMedia Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically (MP3)


• [MP3] Download the show (MP3)

Speaker(s): David Carlick, Managing Director, Vantage Point Venture Partners

Format: Zipped PDF Files