Thread: Are Social Sites Really the Wave of the Future?

Originally Posted by TopDogger

There is a difference between value (which I agree is subjective) and business evaluation (which sets a price for the business).

The business evaluation for the major social networking sites are another dot com bubble. MySpace is a good example of the 'social hype' in overpriced evaluation.


I'm looking at 'micro Value' in the investment in time and resources that a business inputs into social networks and the corresponding returns. It appears to me that social media is a big time waster. Do I want may marketing manager spending all day on twitter and facebook?


The facebook wall doesn't appear to me to be that useful to market a business. It my opinion it's an adult version of myspace.

Originally Posted by TopDogger

I'd say that social networks can be successful for certain types of businesses that have the ability to build up a large list of followers who are very interested in what the business offers.

Facebook as you said can be successful for certain types of businesses with a large list of followers. The targeted adds appear to be working well and appears to be a good distrinution channel for coupons.

Originally Posted by TopDogger

Are social networks the wave of the future for business? I have not seen any evidence of that. They are still mostly play things for web users. Someone has to come up with a good idea for a social network that focuses on businesses. Right now, the closest thing to that is probably LinkedIn, but that mostly focuses on individuals.

Facebook business account don't appear to be a great tool. It works. But it wasn't designed for that. It's like using tables for webdesign. It works but css is much better.

Originally Posted by memenode

I'm not gonna beat that horse anymore though. Bottom line is, my gut tells me social networking is here to stay because it's value is derived from something important to all human beings (socializing, connecting, communicating, sharing etc.). These human sentiments are simply going online, hence manifesting in these still imperfect social networks. Facebook may eventually fall, but social networking will live on in other better forms which might serve both businesses and "consumers" better. There may be disagreements over that, but ultimately we shall see.

Social networking is a great tool. Though I wonder whether using imperfect social networks is the best way for a business to invest their marketing resources.


I wonder whether it would be more useful to put a Free Twitter Script like Floopo - Twitter Clone Script - Micro blogging software - Twitter Script - Free Twitter Script on your site and point your icons to it rather than to twitter. There's even an adsense module


Some other option include https://www.yammer.com/ [Only people with a verified company email address can join your company network], socialtext [intranet into a space for sharing conversations, connections and content] and jive.


I like the idea of using floopo to provide updates and socially interact. Many websites don't have a cms and the owner doesn't have any other option than to use third party networks. So, this may be a good option,. It may be more useful to spend the time on your own site.

Originally Posted by memenode

Meanwhile we know what the situation is right now. Google is betting the company on social stuff, and integrating (or "polluting" by some opinions) even search with it. Bing does it too. People who dislike this (and personalization bubbles that go with it) can go DuckDuckGo, so there. The stage is set. Game on.

Google has a lot of money. But they waste a lot of money buying things that they don't need.


The concept is is interesting in whether they will be able to levarage their many properties and search leadership.

Originally Posted by bogart

I'm looking at 'micro Value' in the investment in time and resources that a business inputs into social networks and the corresponding returns. It appears to me that social media is a big time waster. Do I want may marketing manager spending all day on twitter and facebook?

Of course not, at least not in the way that implies, sitting around just aimlessly chatting or status updating. Most times the social media marketing strategy might involve focusing on building content that will be interesting enough to get "likes" and "shares", and logging in to Facebook to help share it, and interact with people on your fan page, which increases your reputation and builds relationships and loyalty.

Originally Posted by bogart

The facebook wall doesn't appear to me to be that useful to market a business. It my opinion it's an adult version of myspace.

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As silly as that image might appear, it's just socializing, online. It's what social networking is all about. As you can see they're linking to an online resource, and talking about hair dyes, something that I'm sure hair dye sellers and manufacturers, as well as resource sites about hair care and fashion might be interested in. Becoming a part of these conversations can be seen as one of the goals of social media marketing.

I admit though that at this point they're probably first gonna have to find you on a search engine before sharing or talking about it, but those further shares can be of benefit.

Originally Posted by bogart

Facebook business account don't appear to be a great tool. It works. But it wasn't designed for that. It's like using tables for webdesign. It works but css is much better.

I just read this while checking tech news: Google to Businesses: Don't Create Google+ Profiles Yet
Google is apparently aiming to make its social network better for businesses.

Originally Posted by bogart

I wonder whether it would be more useful to put a Free Twitter Script like Floopo - Twitter Clone Script - Micro blogging software - Twitter Script - Free Twitter Script on your site and point your icons to it rather than to twitter. There's even an adsense module

In terms of marketing there doesn't seem to be much of a benefit to it. The point of retweet buttons is to have people who already have followers redistribute a link to your content to those followers. Nobody is gonna sign up for a yet another obscure twitter clone, yet alone get followers on it.

Originally Posted by bogart

I like the idea of using floopo to provide updates and socially interact. Many websites don't have a cms and the owner doesn't have any other option than to use third party networks. So, this may be a good option,. It may be more useful to spend the time on your own site.

Just for on-site social interaction, yeah, it could be useful.

Originally Posted by bogart

The business evaluation for the major social networking sites are another dot com bubble. MySpace is a good example of the 'social hype' in overpriced evaluation.

That is how the exchange of thoughts got going in this thread. The evaluation for MySpace was not based upon anything resembling actual worth. The "value" was based upon hype and fluff because there wasn't anything else to work with. I am willing to bet that there is a team of News Corp accountants saying, "We told you not to buy that company for that price!"

As far as businesses are concerned, social networking sites give most businesses an additional presence on the web, but not more than that. I don't really see a great social networking site for business out there.

Originally Posted by bogart

Google has a lot of money. But they waste a lot of money buying things that they don't need.

That is exactly what they appear to be doing. Easy come, easy go. They mucked up their search results pushing the limits of current technology (such as Google Instant) and now that they are out of ideas for their geniuses to test, they are looking for other ways to spend their oodles of cash.

obviously. the whole marketing is now going to be based upon them in recent future I guess.

Originally Posted by EliseBlanchett

obviously. the whole marketing is now going to be based upon them in recent future I guess.

The importance of marketing is based upon communications and social media is a vehicle for real-time marketing/communications. Thus, social media is an important web strategy for businesses. I just doubt that the top social media sites have the horsepower under the hood to make this happen.

The recently introduced changes to Facebook will be a boon to social marketing if they don't result in too many people becoming annoyed. I wrote an overview here. Pretty much everything anyone does on Facebook will be recorded as social signals, not just likes and shares, and on top of that a lot more can be done through Facebook. It's almost getting to a point where certain internet users wont need to visit any other site but Facebook.com, and Google.com for a few searches.

It is a boon to marketeers in so far as this opens the doors to even better targeting (we couldn't dream of this level of targeting just a few years ago), and a lot more marketing options. On Facebook you'll be able to start an app that allows users to verb any noun as Mashable put it. It can be literally anything.

Of course, we already became dependent on a single big company for our traffic before (Google), and the way things are going with Facebook we might end up too dependent on them too, but that's another story.

In any case, if these changes go well with users, and marketeers see the potential (which I'm sure many will), then social is indeed the future. But then again, we're living in exponential times. "Future" can mean anything from a year to 10 years. If this fizzles out it will be only because something better spectacularly quickly takes us by the storm, but in these times that should always be a given. It also means calling something a fad is literally meaningless and pointless. In exponential times, everything can be as short-term as a fad.

I think that Social Media Sites can become the wave of the future. Facebook and Twitter have become giants in Online Social Media today. I have also come across new social networking sites which are Google+ which helps it's E-Mail Users to socialize and another site is corlif.com which also gives it's members the option of voluntary online charity. So apart from Chatting and Photo Sharing, I feel that Social Networking Sites are also providing net users with things like Online Charity, Helping Services for needy people in times of crisis ans other tools for tapping the potential of people.

Facebook is big, But the issue is that a third party has control of your social page and at any time it can be terminated.

A man in Israel just changed his name to Mark Zuckerberg after his FaceBook page was terminated due to a terms of service violation.

If vanity is the wave of the future internet I want nothing to do with it. lol

Prince Alwaleed and Kingdom Holding--a Saudi Prince--have invested $300 Million into Twitter. The investment is a 3% share of the company. This follows another $800 million investment last summer. So, that should total 11%

This puts the value of Twitter to $10 billion.

Saudi Prince Pumps $300 Million Into Twitter | TechCrunch