The age of social networking is well and truly here!
Facebook™, Twitter™, Linked-In™ and Flickr™ are just a few of the household names we stumbleupon™ on a daily basis. We may not use them all or even know how they all really work, but you just can't help switching on the TV, radio or even browsing your favourite website and not see or hear about one of these services.
The question is not are you doing it yet? It's have you dugg it with digg™ yet?
Companies large and small are trying to leverage this new form of word-of-mouth marketing to spread their message in a passive, but effective manner. However, there in lies a problem. This problem is especially true for larger organisations where the control of information is paramount. Maybe the word control is a little too strong here, perhaps we should say "Analysis & Response".
What I mean by this is, the larger the company, the more they are in the spotlight and bad news can hit like a tidal wave. Companies need a quick way of responding to trending discussions on such news and leveraging social media is fast becoming the new, and lower cost, way of doing this.
Ok, that is the bleaker side of the commercial use of social media, simply transmitting flight information as Lufthansa's has started with its http://myskystatus.com/ service is a cool use of the medium along with the growing trend to promote movie releases and new products and services are all there too, but it all does come back to control, management and marketing finesse.
There are a few services around that offer social networking solutions for companies, KickApps.com has been on the playing field for quite sometime, but released just recently, at the end of last year, Comment Technologies launched with a new angle on corporate buy-in to social networking.
Their philosophy is to "bring the conversation back home" and the platform appears to do just that. With common tools and services like RSS boxes and content panels (Facebook wall etc.), Member profiles, Member pages, Blogs, Polls, Opinions, Surveys, Forums, Photo Albums, Messaging & Groups to name just a few. They promise the epitome of a dream social networking solution for any wide-eyed and bushy tailed corporate marketer.
The Chococo Community is a featured implementation of the platform and you can take a look through it here http://community.chococo.co.uk/.
As for Comment Technologies? We think this is going to be a very interesting few years for them and I look forward to reporting back to you on their progress.
