The Digital Corner

As most of my friends have to come to realize, I am in love with Facebook. I know earlier I wrote that it would be a phase like most social networks, but what can I say, I love it. What Facebook is bringing to light is the emergence of applications as an advertising mechanism. The interactive component combined with the pure social and viral aspect of the applications make this the most targeted, interactive advertising tool on the market (maybe). One of the best apps I have seen is Flixster. It has a stickiness that feeds into the core of social networking. It’s a simple program that ask you questions on a set list of movies and compares your answers to your friends or anyone you invite. As a user, I love seeing the comparisons between my friends.  As an advertiser, I see viral marketing and behavior targeting at its best. Applications are still in their infant stage, but will be big players in the next couple of years. I expect utilizing to see more content owners to start utilizing applications as an advertising platform by 2009.