March 14th, 2008 by Sten Franke
The third part of the ethority survey illustrates the topics discussed within the user generated media in the context of social networks. The basis for this survey was provided by 6000 user opinions in weblogs and online communities. Here, ethority GmbH & Co. KG evaluated comments concerning the issue of online communities in 900 blogs and 300 communities. After having concluded the analysis, the ethority survey was able to verify three main issues in the communication channels within the user generated media: The three issues which were mentioned most frequently in the context of social networks and which are falling in the category of marketing are advertising, recommendation and data security.
In evidence, these results demonstrate that online communities possess an immense recommendation potential in the social networks. Every other user opinion in online communities (52,21%) concerning social networks is either a negative or positive word of mouth recommendation for the respective communities. Such a high density of recommendations cannot be found within the blogosphere. Here, on the other hand, the major network issue is marketing. The continuous discussion about the marketing potential of the networks, the heated debate about Facebook’s Beacon or the Behaviour Targeting in connection with StudiVZ seem to highly attract the bloggers’ attention. Virtually every other blog entry (51,18%) which is concerned with social networks discusses the issue of marketing and advertising. The bloggers’ second main issue is the discussion about data security in the context of social networks. The results show that the blogosphere takes a strong interest in the discussion about social networks in respect of content. In particular, it participates in the discourse about data security and marketing of the social networks. Online communities, however, rather focus on the exchange of experiences made in the use of networks, for instance new applications on Facebook. Basically, online communities also take part in public opinion forming, though more likely from a point of view which concerns dealing practically with the respective networks.
