Last week, I had attended Search Engine Strategies (SES-NY) in New York City. Along with new products, services, and developments in the Search Engine Marketing, another trend is emerging and it’s getting harder to ignore, that of online social search.
There are quite a few players in online social media. The most popular is that of MySpace. In addition to the keyword “myspace” being in the top ten of keywords being searched for online, the media is also using MySpace as a research tool.
MySpace is also being used by the entertainment industry to promote TV Shows like Grey’s Anatomy, and movie releases like Harry Potter . These sites are done in order to build and reinforce the fanbase.
Another fast growing networking site among the college set is Facebook. It is like the online version of a Yearbook, but with a picture, activities, and more all in one. In terms of features, it’s not as rich as MySpace, however, it can get addictive fast with the need to keep in touch.
Meetup.com is a site where people create profiles and then join meetup groups based on geography and/or interests. There are groups from entrepreneurships, to crafts.
The first on the social scene was Friendster, which as been around since 2002. When the site first started, its functionalities included linking to friends of friends, and friends providing recommendations. Since then, they have added blogs, custom templates and custom urls e.g. http://www.friendster.com/wildwe, in order to keep pace with MySpace.
So, you may be asking yourself, what do all these sites have to do with my business? For the answer, tune in for the “next” newsletter.
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