bloggers x bloggers x bloggers = blogssssssssssssss

As more people take the role of citizen journalist causing the abundance of blogs becomes even bigger will anyone have time to read them all or will the get lost in the crowd and it will be harder to find those that are worth reading. Its true, people do trust what they read on blogs, as though it was a professional article. We need to remember that they are only opinions and it is unknown how informed these opinions are.
With more people able to have a say though it should make companies more accountable for their actions and increase transparency of their business activities and agendas which can only be a good thing for the consumer.

My million spaces.com

The online world has gone a little bit mad. All morning I've been browsing the net and asked to sign in, sign up and make a profile no less than 8 times.

All I wanted to do was engage in a little light entertainment and comment on a stupid video I'd seem on stupidvideos.com but found I had to sign up, enter my details, create a profile, invite my friends, load my videos, upload pictures,Is there a site out there offering content that doesn't ask you first to sign up enter your details and create a profile. It all seems very time consuming. Is there a reason why we can't have one login, one username, one password and one profile that can be used for everything.

Its great that companies have woken up to the opportunities of data capturing and social networks but it does seem to have become a bit ridiculous. Has everyone just jumped on the band wagon? It will be interesting to see how long these last.

Will there be a user backlash in the wake, where people get sick of trying to keep up with all their networks, passwords and blogs and call for one universal network? or do we like these small niches where we can decompartmentalise our life and interests. I suppose it relates to the postmodernism whereby consumers enjoy being playful with their identity and roles in society.

It does raise a scary thought though. One that brings us back to initial worries of communicating over an annoymous interface. People we talk to aren't necessary who we think they are so therefore are these networks that we set up resting on lies? Perhaps for the minority but lets not get too paranoid.

open vs closed networks

The new trend for social networks is to go niche, a way of new challengers carving themselves a place in the market. So from a marketing point of view its no surprise.

What's interesting is why we as users are so keen to close down the possibilities of such a great open space, surely defeating the point of the internet in the first place.

I can't decide whether its a good or bad thing to have closed networks. Maybe if we had more open or universal ones we could communicate on different sites without having to sign up and create new profiles all the time. It does seem to slow down the process and deter people from using more than a few different sites.

Ever time I fill in a registration form I get more conscious how much personal information I'm putting out there and whether it can be manipulated for someone else's' benefit. Maybe this is a good thing though as it makes us more careful, as privacy is always going to be an issue.

On the plus side of closed networks and possibly why the trend is moving towards niche network sites is because people want to feel they belong and having a closed group of people with similar interests creates a sense of community and a group identity that we want to associate ourselves with.

Speculation over facebook's drop in popularity I would have thought to be due to its decision to open up to the general public, eliminating its exclusivity to students which I think had damaged its cool factor and has increased the take up of applications due to the different type of people who participate on these networks.

The whole of society works on the basis of the in and out groups. Those who are in have power and superiority over those they don't let in but they have to let enough people in for it to be seen as a desirable and well known group. Therefore I think trends will always switch between open and closed areas to keep the balance right.

relationships need to be worked at

After all the hype surrounding Facebook's announcement to allow brands to set up their own profiles, at a cost of course, have brands got any further in their quest to find a valuable use for this media?

You'd think that access to one of the most popular social network sites, with consumers identified by picture, name, date of birth, home town, university and interests would be a marketer's gold mine. However, little progress has been made to tap into the potential of this new social craze. Whilst most jumped on the band wagon putting profiles and applications together, they held little regard for setting objectives to ensure they were maximising their opportunity.

However did they stop to ask the question of whether people are willing to interact with organisations and brands and to what extent.

Robert Horler, the managing director of Diffiniti, a
Facebook-style intimate nudge believes that many users of social networking sites are actually
hostile towards advertising. "It's easy to forget that the power is in the hands of
users as never before. " (brand republic 2008).

Which is true, for the first time consumers have the power to express their opinions, generate their own content, chose to boycott companies, avoid ads, research issues for themselves. Gone is the time of the passive consumer. Brands need to let go of some of the power they are used to having and give consumers a choice. Providing incentives and rewards can get them on side and overcome any grudging feelings towards adverts imposing on their space.

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/665057/Media-Forum-Facebook-overhyped/

Especially as brands have an obvious vested interest in interacting with their potential consumers but are consumers as willing to enter into a dialogue with them? My initial response has doubted their enthusiasm and also commitment but looking at various brand profiles it seems that its the brands that are lacking in commitment and may have underestimated the time needed to be invested into these networks to even start to create any sort of meaningful relationship with their target audience.

Posting a couple of news updates when launching the site and then sitting back and waiting for comments from fans is not really a relationship. After expressing initial interest visitors will soon get bored if they're not getting anything back.

Its like when a boy asks out a girl in the playground because he like the idea of having a girlfriend but then ignoring her and going back to playing football with his mates. A relationship is never going to prevail if you don't put in some time and effort. Many brands don't even put in the minimum.

They could benefit from contacting its members to come back and visit their site for a particular reason rather than concentrating all their communication on the site itself as this is reliant on members firstly remembering what groups they have joined and secondly reminding them that there is something new worth looking at on there.

It stands to reason that users will talk to those who take time to talk to them, same principle is already used between friends on social networks. Often users will have a small pool of people whom they talk to as they often hear back from them. To get on consumers' radar they have to make several attempts to talk to them on a fairly regular basis or they will divert their attention to their more valued friends.

So to tackle the debate of whether it is worth brands engaging with social networks, firstly you have to ask whether they are prepared to put the effort in. Relationships need work before you can even start to expect a return on investment. The key is to look long term, creating brand awareness, reminding consumers of your presence and gaining that 'cool' factor from having a social network presence and being seen to engage with consumers on their level. This is bound to have positive affects on a brands' reputation that will convert into sales in the long run if the brand can be consistent.