Friday, February 09, 2007

Is The Facebook Diaries Project A Work Of Evil Genius?



(image via toddskogland)

Our old blog pal, the brilliant Sue Mernit weighs in on the new "FaceBook Diaries" project that will appear online and, apparently, on VOD. Smooth. We have to agree with Sue, this is evil genius at work.

"BizWeek's got a story about how Facebook and Comcast are teaming up with a skilled video producer to create and package a series called Facebook Diaries. Basically, it will be a series of user-created videos that are then edited, packaged and probably enhanced by producr RJ Cutler, the Emmy-award winning documentaryproducer who created American High.

"This little story captures some tremendously shrewd ideas:

"Let the audience use the new tools to make the content

"Hire an expert to organize, package and enhance what they create

"Use the means of distribution (the social network) as the marketing tool to build a viewing base
Market to the audience (who are also the creators) on the front end as they make and upload the content, and on the backend, as they watch the finished shows

"Create groups and social networks based on the content they create and market through those too.

"Voila, the ecosystem of targeted, viral marketing, recreated--with a per user acquisition cost waaay lower, bet, than most.

"And it's focused on that 18-24 demographic."

When will Viacom just buy Facebook. You know it has to happen. MTV needs this to compete with MySpace. Every day MySpace moves unchallenged with Murdoch money behind it. MTV and Facebook were made for each other. Everyone thinks so. Do they want another media company to beat them to the punch? Even Cisco is getting in on the social networking space.

For the full post go here (via the awesome sue mernit).

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