For the time being anyway, social networking is the new killer app, at least until the popular culture of consumer self-indulgence implodes, writes Diane Mermigas of the
Hollywood Reporter.
Social network providers like News Corp. and Facebook continue to struggle with their business models and compete for the top spot, but Mermigas says the dark horse on the horizon is GoingOn, an
aggregator of social networks. GoingOn lets users create or join multiple social networks and apply outside Web services such as Skype and Bright Cove, the broadband video network. The idea, the
company's founder says, is to keep the media world from "breaking up into millions" of pieces. Even so, social networks are struggling with some fundamental questions, namely, how to turn a profit.
Social networks are the perfect ground for media companies wanting to reach out to a community of like-minded consumers with new content, but policing them is a problem, as we have seen. Both media
companies and marketers will have to become part of these online communities in order to learn how to discreetly make businesses out of them. At the same time, they need to avoid exploitation and
"corporate heavy-handedness," Mermigas says--a difficult, delicate balance, but one they must achieve.
Read the whole story at The Hollywood Reporter »
