Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, and more continue to search for ways to monetize their sites and business models beyond commercial advertising.  In the past it has not been easy to target mass media advertisements at people on these sites because they are busy with conversation or are just plain better at ignoring ads.  To make money by improving and optimizing the overall end-user experience and in searching for other ways that could potentially result in a revenue stream, there is a strong need to analyze the user behavior and traffic, gathered from large amounts of data. Through better social network analysis, the value of the network can increase for everyone.

For example, improved data analysis allows social networking sites to quickly identify the difference between normal and suspect/abusive user behavior.  This quick detection helps prevent spam and curb malicious user abuse. Other ways of increasing network value include promoting user generated content (i.e. profiles, applications, photos, videos, music, etc.), and building communities with recommendation engines – a cool way to encourage others with similar interest to join and discover new content; these are just a few of the many things marketers at social media sites can do as a result of their analysis of the rich troves of data at their fingertips.     Why doesn’t every social networking site do this?

The problem in conducting social network analysis is the sheer volume of data thrown off by the traffic on these sites (e.g., MySpace and Facebook generate billions of page views every day). Tracking and sorting through this kind of data can often times be costly and cumbersome…

Enter Aster Data Systems: with Aster, social networking sites now have a means to collect and analyze these large volumes of data quickly.  By providing a cost-effective system which easily scales to collect growing site traffic, Aster's nCluster analytic database can load and analyze 100's of terabytes (TB) of data.  This enables social networking sites to monitor and analyze their site traffic at rapid speed for intra-day analysis and response. The data collected allows these sites to build out better product features and enhance the "online" experience – ultimately increasing site usage and ensuring the site doesn’t lose its allure for the users who want to be in control.   

Overall, social media sites are increasingly catering to the needs of the target audience and are delivering the right applications, content, and user  experience that adds value for the users.  The data required to enable this is growing at astounding rates. The key is in cost-effectively capturing and analyzing this data for the betterment of the entire community.  Bottom line – monetizing beyond commercial advertising on these sites involves knowing your target audience and catering to their interests.   If social networks can wrap their arms around massive data sets – this will give them a fighting economic chance as they explore new ways to change their business model.