Social Networks as Marketing Platforms

Val Landi's Weblog, Monday March 13

The big problem with the big socials networks –Friendster, Orkut, Linkedin, Yahoo 360-- is the very real disconnect between networks of “people” vs targeted social networks of people with shared interests, be they best business practices, fly fishing, iPods, or antique cars.

The “niched” social network will, I’m confident, evolve into a major media opportunity over the next few years. Social networks will follow a basic evolutionary law of media that says that media platforms progress from the mass to the specific, becoming ever more granular, with Google’s ad word platform serving the  Long Tail, the most advanced of the species.

Realtime will be announcing just such a new network that will launch in April. It will be a radically new media platform that integrates the best features of Web 2.0 platforms: blogs, worldclass podcasts, and a very large component of user-generated content.

This Realtime social network platform will be a major launch in the consumer publishing marketplace.

Stay tuned for more over the next few weeks.

Web 2.0 Marketing SocialNetworks