I attended the first day of the Social Networking World Forum at London’s Olympia Conference Centre on Monday.
I will be sharing my thoughts with you on the day in a series of three posts. The first of which is on the first session of the day titled ‘Social Media Today: The Facts’
After registration, tea and a Danish pastry, we started the first day of Social Networking World Forum with a ‘fireside chat’. The UK Managing Director of My Space, Anthony Lukom, neatly avoided questions from a Guardian journo. He sidestepped whether or not MySpace would be integrating a ‘real-time’ element to compete with the likes of Twitter and (as of today) Facebook. His stock answer was that everything ‘takes time’. I thought this was the internet?
Lukom did reveal that MySpace will be making a welcome return to its musical roots. But is this too late to save the stumbling giant of the Social Networks?
I was surprised to hear that there had been 1million downloads of the MySpace blackberry application in the first month of its release. Blackberry users and active MySpace members are not two demographics I would have immediately put together. I liked the little promo piece they did for it, getting some bloke (I’ve tried Googling it, but can’t find out who he was) to travel from Inverness to London (performing 10 concerts on his way, he must be famous). He had nothing but £20 and a Blackberry with the MySpace app installed, relying on the community to help him.
I did realise that MySpace is a great place for marketing gimmicks. Trident’s “Mess with your head” campaign and the Mars Planets Radio Show look like nothing I have seen done on the likes of Facebook. Then again, it’s not something I would expect on Facebook’s cleaner, more mature platform.
The next person we heard from was Julie Mayer, CEO of Adriane Capital. Julie provided a plethora of real case studies of up and coming companies, already successful in their online networking ventures.
The notion from furthest outside the box was Zopa’s concept of money lending between members of an online community. I thought this was fascinating, and a totally new concept to me. It sounded a little scary at first glance, but once explained made a lot of sense. If you decide to be a lender, your investment is protected by splitting up into tiny chunks and lending to many other members. A slightly strange concept now, in 2009, but one I can see being much more common place in the future.
Another interesting example was Bview, a community with hyper-focus on local elements, connecting local people and businesses together. One of its most popular features is the ability to find vouchers and discount codes from local service providers and show them to users that live nearby.
Bebo were also there. It was good to hear them say that they believe entertainment is more important that production quality, unfortunately I think @rossbreadmore summed up the rest of their segment with this tweet:
SocialGO’s founder, Alex Halliday, talked about the creation of bespoke niche social networks. I really agree with the idea that people don’t want every aspect of their social life in one place. I have to admit that it’s very strange seeing updates from the Mother-In-Law and that old university crush together on my Facebook news feed in the morning.
Alex highlighted Divorce360 (for those wanting to cry on each other’s shoulders as they go through divorce, and the lawyers that want to prey on them) and Snooth (for wine lovers to get their fix without looking like old soaks in front of the boss) were novel examples.
Presumably these would be created by companies without the gumption to go out there and figure out Ning (which is free, by the way) for themselves. I accept that SocialGO is made to measure and probably a great deal more user friendly, but seriously people, you get it all for free over at Ning. Oh, and Alex is only 23, by the way. Shocker!
Stay tuned forPart 2: Socail Media as Part of Your Marketing Mix
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Thanks for writing about my speech! I will be putting it onling shortly. Hope you enjoyed the rest of the conference.