Blogs multiply on daily basis into millions

Social networking sites have been an affective tool to communicate but blogs enhance the connectivity, converting every blogger into a very effective communication tool.

With more than 150 active social networking sites on the World Wide Web, blogging is getting a boost that is multiplying into millions of users on daily basis. The corporate world is rising to this fast emerging phenomenon and realising the benefits of this cost-effective tool for connecting with their consumers – gaining and retaining their loyalty.

"Social networking is the new mantra after the dot-com bust and blogging is the most effective tool to achieve that," explains Sam Wilson, a technical executive in a Dubai Media City-based digital firm specialising in developing corporate portals.

In July, earlier this year, Dubai's Road and Transport Authority launched a website to register intended car pool users. The hits multiplied by the hours as blogs spread the news, long before it could even be announced officially in the local media.

Later, the establishment enhanced their efforts to communicate with the masses through Facebook and YouTube. Again, the response was overwhelming with thousands hitting the site and registering within hours.

The response was predictably positive. With more than 150 million users of YouTube and more than 90m users of Facebook, social networking websites are proving to be a very cost effective means to communicate at micro and macro level as blogs spread the message across the world.

Business establishments have started exploiting the potential of these net-age tool and this usage is spreading fast in the corporate world.

These are the wave of the time. Especially in marketing and advertising, you simply cannot afford to be left behind as more of your colleagues, audience and, yes, competitors reach out through social networks as a part of their routine strategies.

Beyman Younes, Director of Marketing & Corporate Communication Department at RTA Corporate Support Services Sector, said: "Through launching this Youtube and Facebook service, RTA is seeking to establish a solid knowledge database in order to build a knowledge community capable of developing, sharing and applying knowledge to achieve further development. Visitors of these websites form the cornerstone of a knowledge-based exchange and interaction. Today, media is largely dependent on the internet, with all the new multimedia such as movies, photographs and social networking.

Conveying the uniqueness of this initiative, he added: "Using Youtube and Facebook portals could redefine the geographical dimension, enhance & speed up communication and create an atmosphere for proactive interaction."

"RTA assigns much attention to such type of technology enabling it to better reach customers, let alone other technological features such as the method through which users screen or receive the service content. The e-service of Youtube, Ipod and P to P are shaping up as alternatives to the traditional television and radio devices" added Beyman.

MTV joins the bandwagon

The MTV network may have missed on the opportunity of acquiring the Facebook community, but their presence on YouTube and Facebook is compelling them to consider either acquiring an existing social networking site or develop their own. With millions of their viewers and followers already communicating through the MTV blogs and other social networking sites; it's a not surprising that MTV is seriously considering to take bold steps in this direction.

The current Flux network includes more than 1,000 web publishers, including 35 of MTVN's sites (MTV.com, ComedyCentral.com and Spike.com among them), with 7.5 million registered users.

Mika Salmi, president-global digital media, described Flux as MTVN's "vertical-entertainment strategy," or a more media-based approach to social networking using MySpace- and Facebook-like sharing and content-rating tools.

At a press conference recently in New York and reported in digital media, Salmi and Joshua Dern, MTVN's new senior VP-general manager of social media, described how the system works through the experience of two Flux users, NY Girl and Co-Bert, who frequent two different MTVN sites, MTV.com and the recently launched ColbertNation.com, respectively. After registering under the Flux platform, NY Girl could share a Danity Kane music video she liked on MTV.com with Co-Bert, who could then access the video from ColbertNation.com without leaving the site.

But even if all seven million of Flux's registered users were active, MTV Networks would still have a long way to catch up to the 40.9 million unique users who visited Facebook in August, not to mention the 89.2 million who went to MySpace last month.

Salmi said MTV sites tend to fare better under the time-spent metric; the MTVN Music Group finished first-quarter 2008 with 315 million minutes across its suite of sites, more than three times the total of MySpace Music and nearly 32 per cent more than Yahoo Music. Monthly unique visits to those same sites were up 18.7 per cent, while MySpace Music fell eight per cent. However, because of advertisers' preference to buy based on the size of an online audience rather than their time spent on a specific site, Flux users will likely be targeted on more of an engagement basis, at least at first.

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.