The Primary Motivators of Social Networking

[the following is a guest post from James Morris]

In a digital world where you are interconnected and inundated with messages and images, it’s important to identify and address the needs of those you are trying to network with, to be effective.  When it comes to social networking, are you making the right connection with your audience, or are you simply broadcasting to the masses? Are you giving back to the collective whole or are you just taking what you can get? By understanding your audience and making lasting connections, you not only build a following, but you will also be delivering your message in a more meaningful way.

There are many reasons to become involved in social networking. A leader in this industry, MySpace.com, boasts thousands of different interest groups and reasons for making connections. Whether your interest is cars, cameras, dating, rare collectibles, industry affiliations, or any one of thousands of reasons to connect, chances are, there is a social network that caters to your interest.

For professionals, especially in the realm of marketing, the desire and the need to get involved in social networking seem obvious. The more connections you make, the more exposure your brand receives. It’s a numbers game. Achieving success to that end, however, is an entirely different subject.

Can Google solve the social monetization puzzle?

Business Week had an article recently about; Making Social Networks Profitable - which talks about Google’s (patent pending?) social user ranking system to identify influencers for more targeted Ad Delivery. It’s altogether unsure exactly which patent they are talking about, but some recent patent publications may shed some light on the matter.

One such approach was from Google; a patent dubbed by some as a ‘FriendRank’ which was released back in July of this year;

Network Node Ad Targeting - filed Dec 2006 / published July 3rd 2008 - Note; (FriendRank is apparently a patent pending  method from SocialMedia)

Another related approach you can look at is Microsoft’s; Targeting social media influencers. (filed Sept.2006/ published March 2008) - reviewed here on the trail.

These essentially target top influencers by connections and related topics or groups for the purpose of placing advertising in said profiles. While these are good ideas for targeted Ad serving, (or content serving in general) they don’t provide for a deeper reach across multiple social platforms, or tight topical relevance.

That's where a new trio of patents from Google may further mine social data for better Ad serving, content delivery, association suggestions and the like (mostly for Ad serving if U ask me ;0).

Open Profile Content Identification – Filed Mar 2007 : Published Oct 02 2008

Related Entity Content Identification - Filed Mar 2007 : Published Oct 02 2008

Custodian based content identification - Filed Mar 2007 : Published Oct 02 2008

(Note: Tomasz J. Tunguz-Zawislak (whom worked on all 4 including the network node patent ) was also named on; Profile advertisements – filed June 2006 : Published Jan 2008 and covered here by Bill Slawski)

Anyway, let's look deeper into the three from last week.

Enter Open Social

the Social Media Advertising Council seeks to set the bar

Poor SEO is becoming the hillbilly cousin when it comes to the path for legitimacy. Seems the SMM peeps are forging their own set - or maybe not. Today I cam across this press release concerning the Social Media Advertising Council

They’re mandate is apparently to;

“…create a common vocabulary, standard buying units and uniform measurement methods for marketing within social media. As social network advertising revenues hit an estimated $1.825 billion in 2009, out of a total online advertising market of $30 billion in the U.S. (eMarketer, May 2008,) there is an urgent need among social media buyers and their clients to understand how to quantify and value engagement and exposure on social networks.”

Now I am not one to be petty… or maybe I am… but last I checked not only are engagement metrics a fuzzy proposition, but branding activities themselves are often hard to track effectively. They did address it some with;

" We now need standard buying units, methods of measurement, and a common understanding of what we mean when we say engagement on sites like Facebook, Myspace and Gather, For example, a brand's engagement might include 500 conversations featuring one product, which in turn cascades to close to a million impressions through friend feeds. How do we measure and value that for our advertisers? How do we talk about that kind of engagement?” said Tom Gerace, CEO of Gather & Founding Chairman of SMAC.

Social news networking? Talk about a mash-up

Just a quick note mention SocialMedian – a news aggregate, social voting and networking mish-mash that I am playing with (hat-tip to Nick Wilsdon)…. As always I am at; theGypsy -

Not much to report at this time other than the fact I started a few groups where I will post news (and has RSS feeds imported). So far we have;

The Search World – which obiously will be covering all things search engine marketing related

Collective Thoughts – created on behalf of the gang and has not only the CT feed, but each of the team member’s blog feeds and added favs from around the web.