Sunday, February 24, 2008

How Will Social Sites Make Money?

From the DNA article - Ads give local networking sites the pass

Since the past 18 months, many local social sites such as Yaari, Minglebox, Bharatstudent, Desimartini, Ibibo, Indyarocks, BigAdda and Campus18 were launched ....

... The biggest challenge is the revenue model, which online marketers say is not easy to work out. Social networking, with around 20 million users in the country, hasn’t really proved a goldmine for advertisers as many may have liked to believe.

Page views, impressions and click-throughs — three metrics which online marketers swear by — haven’t yet adapted to the social networking environment in a manner that does not encroach upon user experience.



Absolutely. Pageviews, impressions and click-throughs as a way to measure user engagement with one's brand or product and her perception wouldn't doesn't quite click. Considering the existence of Natural Born Clickers.

So what's the solution? Perhaps, devising better metrics and integrating experiential elements into one's online campaign planning. Robert McLuhan has more in this article in Brand Republic.

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