Uno de Waal

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MK89: A social network waiting to happen

Uno as Online, Web2.0

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Jun|6|2007

I’ve been thinking about it for ages and at our mini-flashmob yesterday with the M&B, Double D and others I mentioned it again, and seeing as I haven’t made a proper post in about 2 weeks I thought it was time.

MK89 is a social network waiting to happen. And when it does it will explode.

Let’s take a look at what you are greeting with on arriving at MK89:

The homepage is a portal page underneath the Mnet sub-brand. Obviously a decision was made here that the MK89 brand falls square under the Mnet one there should be some kind of cross pollination, keeping the youth with the Mnet brand.. Something like that. Come to think about it… Mnet should launch a social network for each of it’s TV channels!

Is this a good approach? Well, taking into consideration that the MK subsite is quite static in a way. It allows for dynamic content, but nothing behind it is user generated, except for the one blog and the results of the poll.

Why would MK89 be the social network to watch out for?

• MK has probably the largest following of Afrikaans speaking teenagers (and other people as well mind you). They have a massively broad and ridiculously loyal client base.
• The youth who are MK fans should be quite tech savvy. Generally from a higher LSM (I’m generalising here) and already on some of the social networks.
• The MK fans love their music and bands. Getting them more in touch with their idols and the bands in touch with their fans is something that they’d definately want to do.
• The suppliers of MK (bands etc) are almost all already on Myspace and know how social networking works and can benefit them. In fact, I’d venture to say most of their marketing goes through Myspace. MK has the perfect leverage on them: Start a profile on our network or don’t get your video shown. Should they decide to take the hardball approach they’d surely get massive sign-ups and then create a way for the kids at home to “praat met jou favrit band”.
• MK has TV advertising. Sure, it’s an opportunity cost. But that kind of advertising is basically

Why should MK89 start a social network?

• Better brand positioning and articulation of values.
• Advertising value (more pageviews etc etc, a targeted marketing approach).
• Feedback from viewers.
• Better understanding of what their market is doing and being able to structure their TV content accordingly.
• Content distribution.
• It’s easier for parents to allow their kids onto the MK network than to digest the ugly world of Myspace Sex Pests.

Some features I’d like to see in the MK89 network:

• Favourite bands
• Favourite friends
• Favourite presenters.
• Favourite venues (possible revenue stream here as well?)
• Photogallery from artists and also user generated.
• Gig guides - with more networking potential.
• Video serving.
• My shows - start your own TV show from the videos available.
• My TV Guide (and SMS’s you when your show is about to come on - how’s that Clickatell?).
• And a whole bunch of other networking features that haven’t come to me yet, and aren’t that obvious.

The time is really ripe for South African niche social networks to start bubbling up. We already see some great examples with Digspot and Mygenius (as opposed to some of the clones). It’s only time for the corporates to get into the act as well as we’ve seen with things like the Specialized Riders club and Disney

Technorati Tags: mk89, social network, mnet, web2.0

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