The key to a social networking site is maintaining an environment that people feel compelled to immerse themselves in. Om Malik has created a piece describing how Fox Interactive Media acquired and is now capitalizing on MySpace. It's a good piece, most of what Om writes is good.
Ed Vielmetti wonders if this race to capitalize - by creating ads or users disguised as ads - will ultimately pollute the system and drive users away. I'd say - definitely. Ed's post deals with direct in-line ads and has a good quote from the article, I'll take the earlier quote:
Om writes:
How Levinsohn plans to meet that challenge can be seen in some early campaigns. Wendy's recently created a MySpace page featuring a four-sided white smiley face called Square (the shape of Wendy's (Charts) burgers). In the space of a few weeks, the page attracted 87,000 users - "friends," in MySpace lingo.
Similarly, Dodge recently created a MySpace page for its new Caliber sportster, a model targeted at the youth and college markets. The "Anything But Cute" page, which also featured cartoon characters (Pig and Bear), rang up 8,500 friends in a week, many of whom downloaded Caliber computer screensavers and posted comments.
So, here's the situation. You have a social networking site that has your friends in it. Your friends are all listed out and you can use the networking site to organize things or communicate with your friends. That's great.
But now, Dodge Caliber is now your "friend." A Wendy's Hamburger is now your "friend." This promotes objects to friend status and demotes friends to object status in one technicolor sweep.
Ed describes the pollution of too many ads on a page or inserted into too many opportunities. But there is equal or perhaps greater pollution of confusing objects with people. On a social networking site, you will rarely ask Dodge Caliber for a restaurant recommendation or to help with a personal problem.
This improper use of "friend" quickly destroys community - which is all MySpace is there for. If Fox were truly sly, they'd come up with another distinction and make it a game to join as many things to you as you could.
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