Monetizing Social Media II

Here is another article discussing the same topic as below.  The basic premise is that advertizing alone will not generate enough to keep the business alive.  I tend to agree, which is why I like the twitter model.  But, I may be naive in this manner.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13326158&CFID=48835061&CFTOKEN=90444495

Monetizing Social Media

This is a good article from a familiar blog.  They have added a new perspective beyond the usual Facebook and Twitter observations.  The author suggests that Apple with it's App Store has found a way to monetize 3rd party sources.  I agree, but is the App Store a community where teens hang out and adults converse.  Continuation of common thought leads to simple adds like those you find in Facebook.  These may eventually support a portion of Facebooks budget, but something more needs to come from it.  The author suggests that Twitter will be introducing accounts that can be paid for in the hopes that businesses will take this on.  I think the Twitter model actually has some merit.  Businesses will soon see that they want to use Twitter internally, but without sharing with the world for competitive reasons.  Businesses will want to implement their own Twitter for quick brainstorming and the gathering of virtual and naturally formed groups within the enterprise.  This sort of application could foster Intellectual Property gathering or Root Cause determination or simply new innovative ways to solve problems.

http://mashable.com/2009/03/28/monetize-social-media/

Social Networking within the Enterprise

It seems that March has been the month of social networks and business mashups. As expected there are many applications and useful ways for the enterprise to benefit from social network and media. Now of course this has been a long time coming, in fact the Wall Street Journal reported on this in the summer of 2007. Here are a list of ways that business is using social networking and media.

• Employee collaboration
• Online marketing
• Product development
• Support services
• Business contacts
• Linkage of business to social media about the business
• Recruitment of contestants
• Public relations
• Learning tool
• CRM
• News feed

Believe it or not, these are examples from news articles that were published in the month of March. The following blog is a nice summary and source of links to the actual articles.

http://blog.sewardinc.com/2009/03/26/social-networking-watch/

Not surprising but Twitter and Facebook are among the most commonly mentioned social networking tools. As reported earlier Twitter has grown 1,382% from Feb. 2008 to Feb. 2009 (CNET March 19, 2009) with now over 7 million members.