Short Executive Summary
This report is an analysis of social media communities in the 2008 digital landscape. It goes over the process of comparing various online user bases through looking at traffic rankings, user demographics and viewing habits, and other useful rankings that can be used to create a website profile.
The sources used include Alexa.com, Compete.com, Quantcast.com, PageRankTool.net, and various domain registration sites. The websites that were profiled were Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia and LinkedIn. After analyzing data for the five communities, suggestions were given on how to solve the issue of drawing in new users.
Each website has an inherent weakness and needs to cover it up before it negatively affects its growth. The recommendations were that:
- Facebook should market to Hispanics
- MySpace should organize its page views and layouts
- YouTube should create new video-focused features, such as mash-ups and exclusive video series
- Wikipedia should create a news-related list of entries and encourage frequent updates to this list
- LinkedIn should target not only the professionals of the world, but also those on the precipice of starting a career: soon-to-be college graduates
The recommendations should boost the user base of each website without negatively impacting any significant numbers of uses. To thrive in the competitive market of social media websites an organization must continuously innovate to both keep and attract new users. Many additional changes could be made to further improve the entertainment value or usability of each site, but the suggestions laid out appeared to be the most cost- and time- efficient.
Every community has the potential to continue to grow, gathering more and more users and becoming more valuable in the process. This analysis demonstrates the usefulness of understanding a target market and catering to that in new ways. Doing this will ensure not only a healthy community but also a vibrant and profitable one as well.
Sources
Alexa.com. (2008). Retrieved April 26, 2008 from http://www.alexa.com
Census.gov. (2007). Annual Population Data. Retrieved April 26, 2008, from http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html
Compete.com (2008). Retrieved April 26, 2008 from http://www.compete.com
PageRankTool.net (2008). Retrieved April 26, 2008 from http://www.pageranktool.net
Quantcast.com (2008). Retrieved April 26, 2008 from http://www.quantcast.com
Whois.Net (2008). Retrieved April 26, 2008 from http://www.whois.net
