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Going to have to face it, we’re addicted to Facebook

Posted in Marketing, Digital, Mel Varley, Latest reporters' blogs October 22nd, 2007 by Melinda Varley

News Corp billionaire Rupert Murdoch has said he had no idea when he bought social networking site MySpace.com two years ago how explosive social networks would become.

Just like how I had no idea when I was first asked to join Facebook how addicted I’d become. It has been reported that Britons now spend a minimum of 11 minutes everyday on Facebook and are the social networking champions of Europe.

Facebook, MySpace and Bebo remain the most popular online hangouts and the trend isn’t slowing down. In fact, the growth across all these social networks is continuing to climb – there are still millions of people throughout the world that aren’t on Facebook, therefore, no need to stop recruiting users.

Advertising changes on the sites on a regular basis, I can’t actually remember seeing the same ad twice. But now marketers are turning the focus to the information it can get out of the users of the sites.

Companies are asking themselves how they can use applications on Facebook to exploit vast amounts of personal data to target new customers.

The thought should make us a little wary but the idea is quite brilliant. Take the character quizzes application for example. This application will allow you to answer a number of questions about yourself which will then tell you which character from Friends or Sex in the City you are most like. A bit of fun or a way of profiling us?

Since 2000, the age of the internet, marketers have repeatedly been told to embrace the power of the internet. In the past two years alone we have been inundated with blog sites, social networks and interactive media.

All these ventures allow users to interact with the brand and each other creating an online community and allowing us to communicate in a way we never have. People don’t seem so afraid to express themselves or their opinions – this used to be something marketers would have to drag out of us – now we just lay it down for them to take.

The success of social networks has surprised us all, but what ever they come up with next probably won’t have as much impact. Can anything top the phenomena of Facebook and MySpace and how it has brought marketers and consumers together?

We no longer have ‘cyber identities’ in which we can hide behind, actually we could if we wanted to, but the internet is no longer a place to hide or reinvent yourself. Social networks have made us more proud to say who we really are, and that is something that is priceless to marketers.