March 13th, 2008 by Sten Franke
The second part of the ethority survey about user insights concerning social networks focuses on the image of the various communities.
Discussions about the social network marketing are still omnipresent within the respective media. There was a storm of protest when Facebook, StudiVZ, etc. tried to merchandise the users’ profiles by measures which were questionable with regard to the protection of data privacy. Numerous calls for boycott and resignation stirred up the debates concerning the marketing strategies of the network operators even more and eventually caused the operators in question to concede. Facebook, for instance, was apparently quite considerate of their own online reputation when the controversial feature Beacon was no longer being offered. But which impact did these discussions have on the networks’ image from the German users’ point of view? The ethority survey was able to demonstrate that bloggers favoured the platform Netmoms, as over 53% approved of the network for mothers. The network Jappy.de also featured quite positive image results within the blogosphere. SchülerVZ, StudiVz’s little brother, was able to achieve the third place in this ranking. Less surprising were the image results of the portal StudiVZ.
These results show that recent discussions about StudiVZ have an apparent impact on the online reputation of the Holtzbrinck portal. Perhaps Holtzbrinck succeeds to escape the image crisis by means of their third network. Schüler.cc, however, does not share the bad reputation of its congener StudiVZ. At any rate, there are no negative comments on Schüler.cc within the online communities. Thus, this student network is the most popular community in German communities. It seems as if the networks’ recent marketing initiatives have put a damper on the users’ mood. In any case, StudiVZ should improve the marketing strategies for their user profiles. Here, Facebook sets the direction and the magic word is Widgets. These small applications on the user profiles are provided by companies such as tripadvisor or the Washington Post. No user of the Zuckerberg network complains about this way of marketing. The reason for this might be the additional benefit which the users obtain from these offers.
Method: The analysis exclusively refers to comments which have been written in user generated media, such as online communities, weblogs, newsgroups, commentaries and on press websites. The analysis of the surveyed main unit is carried out by a special hardware and finally evaluated by market research experts.
