by Marco Fiori

Created on: March 30, 2009   Last Updated: April 04, 2009

No matter how a marketing department angles a new social networking site, it will struggle to tempt users away from the existing giants. MySpace has broken the 250,000,000 registered users barrier, while Facebook has already passed 175 million. There's little a new site can offer, (photos, videos, applications, and music), that hasn't been done before. Any prospective 'Facebook-slayer' needs a unique hook to entice new members, thus allowing it to be economically viable. In 2009 it seems to be revenue sharing, or to the common user, paid social networking.'

After all it is a win-win situation. You only need a user base of around ten thousand, logging on every couple days for your CPM (cost per mille cost per thousand page impressions) to generate substantial income. Sensible business knowledge would have you negotiating rates with advertising publishers ready for your niche-social-network to launch with enough income to support both your company, and user's habits.

By offering a seemingly lucrative rate for viewing site pages, interacting with other users, and referring in new intake, you would be hard pressed to actually lose money. Database costs / hosting would require the majority of your budget, but the rest is easily outlaid towards growth. Users are always going to accept free-money' even if it's at a low rate concerning time invested versus money earned. Therefore, it shouldn't come as a shock to avid users of social networks, that these paying-sites' have emerged. As soon as one showed it could be done, it won't be long until the market is flooded.

The most important question standing in the way is whether, even with a lucrative' economic stimulus tempting users, will people be quick to give up their Facebook / MySpace when they're so engrained in its layout and communities? That isn't to mention the amount of friends' that the average user possesses. A barren social network lacks its draw a sense of sociability, it's like a video games site without the games.

Facebook's recent issues, its terms alteration, and subsequent changing of its layout, has indicated that, yes it's quite possible. If a site's member rates begin to leak, then it's easy to see how a well structured site could grow to challenge Facebook. It would just have to do everything the popular sites already do, along with new features and the obvious financial incentive. In an already bloated market, the boom era has surpassed itself. You need to stand out and 'paid-social-networking' may be just that.

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