What's the attraction and who's doing it?

Every day millions of people are having conversations online. Forming around passions and interests, millions of blogs and hundreds of social networks, message boards, wikis and media-sharing sites are discussing a vast array of subjects. As a result the phenomenon of social networking is booming, with websites dedicated to building online communities of likeminded souls attracting users at a very rapid rate.

While the most popular - Bebo and MySpace – are used predominantly by younger users, Facebook and Friends Reunited attract all ages and there’s even a Saga Zone, aimed at the over-50s. LinkedIn and Plaxo – for business people - are very useful for networking but nowhere near as popular as the others, mainly because they’re full of IT people talking about work!

Businesses are only just starting to realise the possibilities offered by social networks. One such business, Boo.com, is using social networking on their travel site to engage with their customers.







boo.com is the key consumer brand of Web Reservations International. Launched in May 2007 boo combines search functionality, social networking and reviews all within one site; uniquely it allows users to book directly with a hotel’s own website. The domain name, boo.com, was bought as it’s short, memorable and works across all languages. According to boo.com CEO Ray Nolan “Social networking is changing the way the travel industry works. People no longer want to see just the brochure copy, they want real opinions, good and bad. Our trust rating index enables reviewers to earn the trust of the rest of the community based on the number of reviews they submit and how useful these were considered. This takes some of the risk and anonymity out of the whole decision making process.”







MySpace - famous for promoting music acts such as The Arctic Monkeys - has long been a favourite of the music and fashion industries as a means of keeping in touch with what’s happening. The MySpace generation, however (even those in the creative industries)have now debunked to Facebook, which offers a much wider catch net for audiences, though without that creative edge.







YouTube is a site where users can host, tag and share videos. Anyone and everyone can record a video and load it onto the site for all to view and review.

Piers Thompson of RoughlerTV says “While the Girls From St Trinians were recording Trouble for the soundtrack of their new movie, I nipped down to the studio with a camera, which turned out to be malfunctioning colourwise, and filmed them. After my clip went up on YouTube it flew to No.1 on YouTube’s UK Music Chart. At press it has racked up 395,515 views, 1565 favourites, 753 ratings and 740 comments, almost all in the movie’s demographic. This would not have happened 5 years ago.”

According to Wikipedia, making these types of answer clips is ‘the new craze sweeping the nation’. It’s rather like political campaigning. You have to shake a lot of hands but you need a leaflet to back it up. You look for possible sympathisers, greet them like long lost friends, and send them a link.








Facebook began life as a tool for Harvard’s student base, before being opened up to other US universities and employers, and then last year to anyone in the world with an email address. There are currently more than 50 million worldwide members of Facebook. This phenomenal growth prompted Microsoft to buy a 1.6% stake in it for £117m last October.

Michelle (anonymous), an avid user of Facebook, says “I used to use Facebook nearly every day (as it is very addictive) until it was banned from my work! At the moment, I probably log on about 3 times a week. I use it for tracking down old school friends, sending messages to friends, uploading photos of a night out or viewing other people’s photos and holiday snaps, sharing videos, and organising events and RSVP’ing to invitations - everything really!”

So what are the pros and cons?

Social Networking sites have transformed the way people communicate and attract millions of regular users. Professional networks such as Linkedin allow knowledge workers around the world to fi nd and work with each other. However, people can spend more time typing messages to their ‘virtual’ friends than their real friends; divorces are prevalent with people looking up old school friends and re-inventing their lives, and employers are increasingly checking out job candidates’ social networking profi les.

Organisations are becoming vulnerable to sensitive company information being placed onto these sites. Increasingly they will be looking at companies such as Claranet to provide services which can block access to social networking sites or at least monitor the content.

But where’s Social Networking heading ?

A last word from Justin Davies of BuddyPing, a mobile only social networking company - who says, “The mobile is becoming increasingly important. Ask anyone who has a Blackberry when they last used it and you’ll see what I mean. With more handsets in use around the world than personal computers, and countries like South Africa and India without the broadband infrastructure, the mobile is the way people use technology to communicate.”

“Online social networks can quickly become very insular, and this is something BuddyPing tries to resolve. The phone’s address book your real world connections and, along with you and your friends’ locations, we provide way to arrange real world social interactions and allow people to share them.” “Social networks are now starting to appear on the mobile, and this will increase over the next year. Watch out for social applications being pre-installed on phones, and the big social networks providing more mobile centric offerings.”

:: For further information on Social Networking and how we can help you take advantage of Social Networks with your business, please contact us. We look forward to talking to you. Please call +44 (0)845 688 3361 or email Grant Bowman ::

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