Musicians take social networking into their own hands by Lucia Hrusovska

In the past few years we could noticed a trend of creating more and more private networks. Although, they are not meant to replace the existing ones, such as Facebook or MySpace, the interest in them is still increasing. The reason is simple, they just offer members more options than they would have on standard network sites. In addition, users generally prefer two-way communication. The clue to getting them coming back is artist involvement, either through comments or blogs. People who formally own these networks are most of the time celebrities, as an example we can mention Kylie Minogue, Ludacris, Pussycat Dolls or the rapper 50 Cent, whose own networking site is called Thisis50.com. On this site, fans have a possibility to create their own accounts, friend lists, fill in profiles exactly the same way as on MySpace. The only existing difference is that 50 Cent has a direct access to users of the site and their e-mail addresses. The advantages of creating such network sites is also on the side of owners. They can sell advertisements, offer different downloads or merchandise for sale. It can seem, that creating such networking site is very expensive, but this is not entirely true. If artist use one of many companies, that offer hosting or the tools, launching is relatively cheap for them. In spite of this, it happens all the time, that artist just turn their Web site into a social network. In addition, a broadband TV and a kind of social networking site exists, where artist can chat with each other, shared information about users, are able to see what they watch and click on. This service called UVNTV is going to be formally launched in January 2009.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080329/wr_nm/social_dc;_ylt=Ao9GMdKnQ50NWYkkLd2V.Gms0NUE

by Lucia Hrusovska for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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Edited by: Katarina Bosanska