Social Networking & Marketing

Social Networking and Marketing: Past Present and Future

Abstract

Social networking sites are a hotbed of current and relevant marketing information. This paper discusses methodologies used by site operators as well as marketing companies for obtaining and using profile information from social network sites and how that evolution is occurring. Additionally, the subject matter addresses the possible future of internet marketing by studying emerging technologies and how they could apply to social networking sites, specifically addressing the extraction of profile information.

Social Networking and Marketing: Past and Future

In the early days of social networking sites, user profile information was very limited. Since that time user profiles have evolved to include current information about the user’s demographics, education and family. Additionally, the user profile contains information about the likes, habits, hobbies and pastimes of the user. This information has become a great interest to marketers both inside and outside of the social network scene. The information helps the internal site owners and management keep in touch with current social trends and stay in tune with the likes and dislikes of the membership. External marking companies are exploring and implementing ways to extract, analyze and compile this information for marketing purposes. If successful, they will have tapped into a vast resource that dynamically provides current and comprehensive information about consumer’s demographics, education, family and habits. Moreover, this information provides insight into how consumers interact with friends on the social networking site. Social networking site management states that the data is safe from intruders but evidence proves that to be an inaccurate statement. Marketing data is being collected from millions of social networking site members every day.

Examining Profile Information

When Facebook, MySpace, etc, first began, they were...