Jumping on the social networking bandwagon, Upromise has started its own Upromise Community — “to help members connect with each other.” It appears this section of the site was started in September, but an email introducing it to members only went out this week. Rather than connecting members, the posts I read this morning all seem to be in the nature of support requests — “I don’t understand this, I’m not getting credited for that.” Further, the post layout is confusing to me and I’ve been involved in message boards since the dial-up BBS days in 1986.
I think it’s great that Upromise is trying something new, but in this case I don’t see that the forum is fulfilling any unmet member need — unless that need is for more information on how the program works, which it seems to me would be better served by improving the FAQ or by having members submit questions which would then be answered in a section of a newsletter emailed to everyone.
Rather than connecting existing members via a forum, I think Upromise would do better to reward its evangelists — its intense users and loyal fans — for reaching out to other social networking sites and spreading the word about the benefits of the program. Give members an incentive to tell their friends, like Ebates and MyPoints do.
Click to visit the Upromise Community, or join Upromise if you’re not a member.
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Nielson/NetRatings has issued a study showing that the top 10 social networking sites saw traffic grow 47% over the last year, with MySpace seeing the biggest growth (367% increase) and MSN Spaces (286%) seeing the biggest growth. Hosted blogging systems were included in the study.
One thing to note about those numbers is that while Classmates had one of the lowest positive growth rates at 10%, they spend loads on advertising while MySpace, Youtube, and Facebook haven’t spent a penny.
If I recall correctly, a couple years ago Classmates.com was one of the 10 largest spenders on online advertising.
There are plenty of new social networking sites poping up but what get’s me why can’t myspace there instant messenger working. $580 mill and can’t afford to fix instant messenger BAD myspace.
There are so many better ones how about http://cubiclelife.net for example has all the features of myspace plus quizzes, polls, webchat with audio and video oh and hey they have instant messenger. You have a long way to go myspace.
http://seekingalpha.com/wp-content/seekingalpha/images/socialnetapr06.jpg
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