Social Site Specialization

While browsing through my news feeds today I stumbled upon an interesting article about social networking sites for our parents demographic. In recent years networking sites such as myspace and facebook have grown exponentially and earned millions for their creators. Marketing agencies can now use these sites to gather information and test new web marketing promotional techniques. But as mentioned in Paul Gillien's The New Influencers most of these sites regular visitors are in the younger demographic. In the Times article “Teens are tire kickers — they hang around, cost you money and then leave,” said Paul Kedrosky. Entrepreneurs are now looking to get the older half of the population, soon to be the majority, on the social networking band wagon. The article mentions one of myspace's early investors VantagePoint Ventures recently invested in a site for couples who have settled down called Multiply. Were myspace leaves off helping people find someone for people to make babies with, Multiply picks up for couples interested in multiplying their numbers and networking with others interested in the same.
I have alwase been a bit apprehensive about myspace and facebook only because it seems
too good to be true. A totally free social networking site sounds wonderful but why would such a trivial thing be so huge? Well the answering is marketing and getting members to post as much information as possible on the site. Call me paranoid if you wish but the money in demographics research, lead generation and other forms of data mining is very substantial and the format of myspace, facebook, and other large social networking sites seems like a taylor made system for getting consumers to volunteer survey information. But, I digress, I may very well be wrong and even if I'm right the advantages of social networking might out way the potential loss of privacy. A good rule of thumb is don't fill that personal info out in your profile unless you don't care who reads it or how they use it. As a matter of fact that rule works for just about anything you do, say or watch on the internet because the marketing and data mining companies out there are taking notes.