Web Work
Social Networks
There was an idea — overreaching and impractical — that Cabin Pressure the company would create what we called in 2002 “A way for people to, like, make profiles and write stuff about football.”
The idea was not uncommon and everyone who has ever coded a line of HTML will claim to have invented MySpace or Facebook in their heads before those Social Networking behemoths came to the public consciousness.
Clients and brands are playing catch up now — the Holy Grail of a branded Facebook still shines bright — and trying to leverage what communities they have attached to current web presences into Social Networks.
I have taken clients down the route of establishing brands on Facebook, Bebo and MySpace and there is some merit in that but other — perhaps braver — clients have developed or are developing full Social Networking Applications.
In these projects the best practice is still not established yet. Video blogging around a Premier League football club’s ground formed part of one proposal and who can say if it would be more or less popular than the ubiquitous Facebook Zombie?
The best uses of social networking are not yet defined and so working in this area at the moment is exciting and rewarding.