Social Networking Overload
It seems like a new social networking site pops up every other day. They aren’t trying to compete with Facebook or MySpace. Instead, these new social networks aim to be the Facebook of their niche. Here are just some of the more recent examples that I’ve come across:
Currently in preview mode, BusinessTravelConnexion.com is American Express Business Travel’s B2B social network for the corporate travel industry. The site will have online discussion boards, hot topic polls, product development councils, blogs, benchmarking ability, and a whole host of other features. Of course, they hope it will be “the Facebook of corporate travel.”
CookEatShare, which just launched publicly in June 2008, calls itself “a Facebook for home cooks and professional chefs.” Besides the obvious function of being a repository for recipes, CookEatShare also lets chefs upload cooking DIY videos, and hopes to foster interaction between home cooks and professional chefs. While it sounds promising, there already are many well-established cooking/recipe sites. It seems that the ability to interact with professional chefs will be a key differentiator – time will tell if the chefs actually want to interact too.
The most high profile new niche social network so far has to be SportsFanLive, started by a former CBS and Yahoo! Media executive. Although it is targeted at super-passionate sports fans, the site will not just be a general place for sports fanatics to meet each other. Instead, each user can customize SportsFanLive to feature his/her favorite team. FanFeed allows fans of the same teams to share articles with each other, while users will be able to find out if anyone is congregating at the local pub to watch a game with FanFinder. Skeptics say the market for sports sites is already saturated, while others think this may be, yup, the Facebook of sports fans.
From a consumer’s point of view, I think social network fatigue is definitely kicking in. Even with niche social networks that target specific interests, there’s only a certain number of social networks you can join before you burn out. And even if you do join 15, or just 5, social networks, how active can you really be on each one? The value that these social networks add to users’ lives has to be so great that they will be willing to go through the hassle of setting up a profile, connect with others, and most importantly, return to the site constantly.
That last point is important to advertisers, who value the ability to target the specific demographic they know are on these social networking sites. In 2007, BusinessWeek wrote about how advertisers are willing to pay “double-digit figures for every 1,000 times their ad is viewed” on niche social networking sites, versus the less than $1 norm on other general social networking sites. This year, Mashable reported that 8.2% of the $920 million spent in 2007 on advertising within social networks went to niche sites. For 2008, “it is estimated that spending will increase to $2.1 billion, and the take for smaller networks will rise to 10%.”
So far, advertising on general social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace hasn’t seemed to produce the results that some advertisers had hoped for. Do they really think that it will make a difference if the ads are more accurately matched with users’ interests? Apparently so.
