Temporary social networks are not rare
This isn’t completely true:
Temporary social networks are fairly rare
There are plenty of folks at WOMMA, like Affinitive, that have been creating “temporary social networks” for the video game industry and elsewhere. Affinitive’s social network product, Enclave has all the components for this: blog, chat, profiles, video, groups, msg boards, etc.
Do the tools Enclave has built-in look familiar?
Marketers are always looking for the next best thing. Awhile ago it was keyword advertising, now it is “new media” (which encompasses a little of everything, from snack food videos to expandable flash banner ads). It only makes sense that social networks are the next big thing in this arena.
Campaign-based social networks make a lot of sense. Surprisingly, Hollywood hasn’t completely caught on yet, although Snakes on A Plane is a good example of how word of mouth marketing can at least generate quite a bit of buzz (it wasn’t the buzz’s fault that the movie was awful). Temp social networks for movies make quite a bit of sense.
Message boards have been around forever and still work particularly well as “web 1.0″ social networks. Enter Web 2.0. Taking the power of the tools that places like MySpace and Facebook have made mainstream and rolling them into a “campaign social network” gives you a pretty powerful marketing play.
