Trust: The business model of social networks

Translator: A very inspiring advertising model for social networks. "When it comes to advertising in the mass media, it needs to be famous because it works only when the audience already knows who the celebrity is," he said. But in social networks, "small celebrities", who are famous in their small communities, can prove to be equally effective, perhaps even more effective, especially if these activities resonate, excite, and "cool". ”

Last week, at an industry meeting in New York, Fox Interactive Media (translator: FIM, News Corp acquired the Internet Division after MySpace). President Robertlevinsohn told the audience:

"MySpace's mainstream marketing will remain in the" Sunshine "field of the site, such as books, comedy shows, movies and gaming zones, rather than the user's personal profile pages, which contain less restrictive content--something many advertisers have expressed concern about. "We want marketing people to work with us more easily." "Levinsohn said.

I liked Scott Karp's reaction to the statement, he wrote: "It sounds more like advertising will be banned from user behavior, just like the protesters at the Bush rally." "Hehe ... That's funny! Similar to Scott, my response is questionable, because I feel that traditional media thinking may be inadvertently pushing them (Fox Interactive Media, FIM) into the wrong direction.

As you now realize, the fundamental problem that social networks face when trying to make a profit from an advertising-focused business model is a lack of trust. More specifically, although brand advertisers have historically trusted consumers, for the same group of people, they are not trusted as advertisers (for example, they cannot control content). Similarly, users of web sites that are armed to interactive functions are proving increasingly distrustful of brand advertisers, such as the use of "ad skipped" functions.

In many ways, today's social networks are more like the currencies of underdeveloped countries or politically unstable states at the present stage of development. In this context, the Government must do all it can to create and generate trust between its national electorate and public institutions. After all, what is a currency without people's trust? It's just a worthless piece of paper.

MySpace and other social networks are in a similar predicament. MySpace, in particular, needs to be a catalyst for trust between its users and advertisers. While adopting a strategy of isolation, the above "circled" brand security zone may satisfy conservative advertisers and gain some benefits in the short term, but in the long run this effort will actually further exacerbate mistrust between users and advertisers, worsening and limiting the long-term viability of their business models. Instead, what MySpace needs to do is confront the problem, fundamentally creating a new level of trust between its participants that it didn't have before.

Given this broad, high-profile view, let me illustrate the point I'm talking about in this article by presenting a specific plan idea. The idea itself is not the problem, and the goal is to prove a direction through this example: how to gain trust between users and advertisers.

Imagine the following scenario:

A teenage girl is looking at her MySpace profile. On her page, she notices an old Navy Navy video ad (translator: Oldnavy is America's mid-range casual apparel brand). But this special ad is very easy to attract her attention, because she immediately discovered that the protagonist of the advertisement is actually her high school classmate! She did not hesitate to click on the "Play" button to watch her friends talk and dance, while showcasing the Old Navy's new Madras series of casual clothes. In many ways, advertisements feel as if they are made by users, but in general they are very professional ... This creative feeling is consciously injected into the ads by the Old Navy advertising agency. As she was excited, she noticed that her cousin, who was in college, was online, so she told her about the situation she had just seen through instant messaging (IM). Her cousin replied that she had seen the same old Navy ad on her MySpace page, but the girl in the ad was the one she knew at college.