Push and Pull
From Baruchnewmedia
The "Push" system can be characterized as an attempt by businesses to influence social networking sites through their advertising, other types of promotions, or actions. The main idea behind it is to gain as much visibility amongst the members of social networks that the users of such sites would notice the product or service offered, and react to it. This form is dominated by digital and viral marketing.
The "Pull" system would be characterized by the opposite relation. In this instance businesses try to create a social networking environment around an existing product or service. It is important for such ventures to attract and maintain a fan base that grows constantly, in order to sustain, or increase the businesses profits.
The "Push" system seems to be the dominant system. Today, many sites are in need of sponsorship, and what could be a better way if not to have some company to sponsor a social networking site, or other sites of thematical interest? Some of the sites that do employ such techniques, and are heavily sponsored by third-party businesses are: MySpace, and Facebook, that do practice placing advertising on their sites quite heavily. A contrast to such practices might be Badoo (a social networking site mainly popular in Europe, and South America that offers photograpgy exchange, as well as video exchange), where there are no ads on members' pages, yet the site generates lots of attention from the business standpoint (just recently Finiam, a Russian company invested $30 million in Badoo).[1]
When it comes to the "Pull" system, the entertainment industry proves to be the most successful in attracting new members. There are a couple of leaders when it comes to this system, one of which is Steam which has more than 15 million member accounts. Steam is Valve corporation digital distribution system that incorporates many features that are available to other social networking sites, as well as additional features. One of the most prominent features when it comes to the social networking of Steam is the “Friends” communication system, that allows players to not only voice and text chat with each other, but also, join the same games, discuss topics in groups, as well as compare statistics relating to in game activities. Furthermore steam supports a persistent identity framework that allows players to use such features such as: personal avatars, groups, leader boards, user profiles, achievements, and software reviews. In the case of Steam it did build up the social networking features around its initial business, which was software distribution. The implementation of the social networking features did allow Steam to become more of a social experience to man, rather than just another piece of software used to obtain online bought goods.
Another venture that integrates social networking, and utilizes the “Pull” system is GameTap which is a Turner Broadcast Systems subscription based game distribution system, which allows users to access games, GameTap branded messaging system, chat lobbies, which are centered on each of the online games provided by the GameTap service, and seamless integration of AOL’s AIM messenger. Additionally, GameTap offers to its subscriber’s video on demand services. The majority of the content provided to the subscribers is community driven, and new futures are added continually in order to sustain the sites popularity.
