Getting in Your Face-Book

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Steve Smith

Getting In Your Face-Book

Like high school geeks trying to sit at the lunch table with the cool kids, traditional media companies keep trying to nudge their way into this growing market of social networks. Every once in a while I perform random searches of media brands in MySpace and Facebook to find lists of magazine profile pages that just sit there, inactive and apparently waiting for someone in the lunch room to talk to them.

Some brands make more sense as "members" of a social community than others, and the magazines themselves may be surprised or dismayed by the ways they leverage the brand socially. A trade magazine like Firehouse, for instance, has several thousand "friends" in MySpace, largely because so many firefighters and emergency-rescue professionals are already in the MySpace target demo and socialize here.

Hearst's Cosmopolitan has over 32,000 friends in MySpace, and the brand feeds the latest news and videos here in a more robust way than some other magazines maintain their profile pages. And I must say that the members are embracing the Cosmo fantasy. If I am to believe the member photos in the friends area, then Cosmo has a lot of gorgeous friends who look suspiciously like, well, magazine models. Still, I count only a few comments posted daily in what is supposed to be a social environment, not really a publishing environment.

So how do print publishers actually become part of a conversation or get into the social flow of these networks? I don't think anyone knows yet, but it certainly involves more than traditional publishing. In Facebook, for instance, some of the most trafficked and popular media-related groups are not branded profiles but assemblages of former interns and employees of magazines and publishers.

But the best way to make friends in a virtual social environment is to give the cool kids the tools that make them seem, well, cooler. An interesting Facebook experiment from CondéNet is already demonstrating this party principle. It just started building Facebook apps that let users shout out what they are wearing now and find and show the recipes they are consulting. The What Are You Wearing? application is an interactive program within your Facebook page that lets you choose an outfit, name the brands you are wearing (or fantasizing about wearing) and post them for friends to monitor. Likewise, the EPICURIOUS.COM What I'm Cooking app will search the recipe database and not only deliver the how-to content to your Facebook page but also keep friends apprised of what in on your menu.

"What we really like about Facebook and impressed us is the way the viral thing works. It is so easy and natural and mirrors what happens in real life," says CondéNet president Sarah Chubb. Facebook users invite others to add the applications and so share information about what they are cooking and wearing. The fashion app has 80,000 users and adds up to 1,500 more a day. Condé is already feeding ads into its Facebook apps.

Arguably, widgets offer a similar opportunity for brands to distribute tools rather than more content, but creating applications within existing social networks like MySpace and Facebook allows for more direct social interaction among friends than widgets on blogs. Still the principle is the same. If you want to be embraced by the cool kids party you don't just show up in garish clothes and talk hip. I know. I tried that and it didn't work. You bring things that enhance the party experience: a band or perhaps spiked punch.

But don't bring Mr. Microphone. I tried that too and was officially banned from ever, ever trying to sing REO Speedwagon riffs.

Steve Smith (POPEYESMITH@COMCAST.NET) is Digital Media editor for min/min's b2b, which includes weekly columns and the biweekly min's Digital Media Report e-letter (complimentary to min subscribers). Smith also writes the Mobile Media Report for Access Intelligence, LLC's biweekly Wireless Business Forecast.

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