• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, June 9, 2006

In the wake of the burgeoning popularity of social networking sites like MySpace, a wide variety of other sites will likely adopt more user-generated functions and networking features, predicted Jon Gibs, director of media analytics for Nielsen//NetRatings.

In a presentation Thursday at the Digital Marketing Conference in New York, Gibs cited the Washington Post as an example of a publication that has incorporated social functionality in its Web site. Recently, the site has rolled out a variety of features, including forums to discuss particular topics and easy linking to social bookmarking site del.icio.us.

Washingtonpost.com has also "opened up its back end content database to make it really useful for mashups," Gibs said--for example, allowing users to map the geographic locations of events reported online using Google Maps--user-generated content that can spread virally via blogs or e-mail.

According to Gibs, social network-style functionality has helped the Washington Post close the gap with rival New York Times' site traffic over the last year--a gain of about 3.5 million viewers. He also dismissed marketers' fear that pure social networking sites like MySpace are eating into the online traffic of other sites. "It's not a zero-sum game," Gibs said, pointing to users' general propensity to "play the field" by repeatedly visiting large numbers of sites--a characterization that seems in line with their average number of monthly visits to various sites, from a high of 63.9 visits for del.icio.us to 31.2 for Flickr to a surprisingly low 19.1 for MySpace.

Gibs also presented demographic research related to social networking. Nielsen has identified a group, which it dubbed "My.internet," that's especially likely to visit networking sites. Sixteen percent of Web users belong to this group, which has a median age of 32 (that number might skew high, Gibs said, because Nielsen's research doesn't include anyone younger than 18). Nearly all members of this group--99 percent--visit blogs; 84 percent are members of an online community; 57 percent have their own blogs; and 22 percent use RSS feeds.

Gibs reported that "My.internet" users tend to be highly engaged with most of the Web sites they visit, as measured by 10 factors, including whether they "liked" the site and were likely to return. What's more, this engagement carries over to the ads--provided that they are relevant, Gibs said.

But he cautioned against the overuse of rich media ads, stating that the "My.internet" group finds such ads annoying. These users tend to approach the Web with a "just let me drive" attitude, Gibs said, in which intrusions or distractions are unwelcome--meaning that they favor contextual text ads. "Poorly developed rich media is really, really intrusive," Gibs said. "It's just as bad as a pop-up ad."