richullman

Is Social Media Rampantly Monetizable?

Hi Ashkan,
Sorry we missed you in NY. What you missed was a lot of conversation about traditional ad models into the social environment -- something that I think you'll agree won't work -- or at least it hasn't yet.
No one talked about how all web sites will become more social (beyond just comments) and evolve into communities around their subject. Great communities where better content will rise to the top and flow to people all over -- via friends.
It's what happens when local newspaper sites don't just provide local news, but they aggregate content that's relevant to their local audience, and make the sites the local gathering places for information sharing and relationship building.
And its what happens when publishers turn their sites into specific communities around topics (skiiing, recipes, etc.) that people care about.
Content in these communities will be multi-dimensional because it will come from everyone, not just the publishers. It will be much more valuable because you know that the people there ARE engaged, and you'll be able to measure it, not just in page views and click throughs, but by what people are talking about and who's doing the talking.
This is very different than trying to throw ads and messages into private conversations. It's creating conversatinos that people want to engage in.