If you want to learn more about how social media is going to influence the future of internet business, check out this podcast of Dave Fish, CEO of IMN, interviewing Paul Gillin, founding Editor-in-Chief at Tech Target, who is currently working on a book titled “The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to Social Media.”
Some takeaways from the interview:
Small is the New Big (that’s the title of Seth Godin’s new book). The future of media is in small markets. Small communities, engaged people who are really interested and who want to interact with other people who have similar interests and those are very good people to get your message in front of.
Smart marketers will target communities either by demographics or by interest and identify the areas where they can reach those people. For example, MySpace is dominated by teenagers, and the MySpace model is going to be taken into many other smaller special interest communities in the coming years, and marketers should really be tuned into where that’s happening in their area.
It is important to be direct. Deception is considered uncool in blogging and in social networking. Fake blogs and false communities are bad for business. It’s better to be open about your commercial role as a sponsor rather than infiltrate a community under the guise of a participant. It’s best not to try to deceive people because once they find you out, your name will be mud forever.
There are communities developing in many B-to-B areas; marketing is one example. Companies are interacting with each other using social media tools, but they’re doing it out of public sight, through extranets and intranets.
Web 3.0 will be the Video Web. YouTube is the poster child in that area, but there are many other sites coming about. Web 4.0, or whatever follows the video, is going to be driven by this small community trend - a devolution of the MySpace model into hundreds of small, special-interest communities.
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