Should social networks be treated as 'primitive lands?'
It takes almost anthropological skills to understand the still "primitive" land of social networks, contended one of the speakers Wednesday at the Search Strategies 2008 Conference and Expo in New York.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - The tribes of online participants who gather together in sites such as Digg, Second Wave, and Wikipedia are actually developing distinct sociological subcultures, according to Rob Key, CEO of a company called Converseon.
Key's is a business geared toward developing new online brands in the social media space -- which is a difficult task considering that there are ever fewer polysyllabic contortions available in the .com registry.
Meanwhile, outsiders from a variety of perspectives, including marketers and PR specialists, are now developing and using metrics aimed at analyzing social networking sites and other new media, said other speakers on the panel. The end goal of all of this sociological analysis is to try to gain more leverage for advertisers who'd like to sway what's happening on the Web.
Jonathan Ashton, VP of SEO and Web analytics at Agency.com, delivered a rundown of some of the many tools that can be used for analyzing blogs and RSS feeds, for instance. And a tool from Comments.com tracks both blog posts and comments, for example, whereas a tool from Talksdigger.com tracks blog back-links.
But Key suggested that social networking sites really demand their own unique approaches, and that advertisers find a way to tailor their message to social networking communities.
"The brands haven't necessarily been invited," he admitted.
Key indicated he thinks it's okay for outsiders to lurk on these sites -- but that if they do, they should listen hard to what they hear.
"Who are the voices and what are the venues?" he asked rhetorically. "You need to understand who is talking to whom."
Like other types of societies, social networks have their own "cultural elders," he observed. If an advertiser wants a product to become known on a site, Key suggested, it makes sense to first figure out "who is influential."