Tomorrow morning (Wednesday, Oct. 3) is another gathering of Social Media Breakfast at the offices of the Digital Influence Group in Waltham. Larry Weber will be making a presentation and Q&A (prepare by reading his new book - Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business).
I will be leading a follow up session about "Just who is paying for social media, and what business model does it need to thrive?"
Here is a start of a list of Social Media Business Models:
1) Device manufacturers – Hardware, Applications, and services
5 companies sell 80% of the 400 million mobile phones
2) Internet Access – Comcast, Verizon, ISPs
Multiple points – home, laptop, handheld/phone
3) Application purchase
Outlook (MS Office), Eudora (Qualcomm-sponsored)
Mobile Apps – Value for more convenient services
New tools – voice recognition, LBS, tagging tools, etc…
4) Implementation and integration – Mostly Enterprise
SaaS – Software as a Service versions for mobile
Training
5) Advertising –
National for branding
Ad supported SaaS (GMail, flickr)
Local for transactions and foot traffic
Pricing categories:
CPM - Effective amount earned for every thousand page views
EPC - Earnings Per Hundred Clicks
RPU - Revenue per user in a period - for a subscription site
6) Transactions
Big = Companies themselves by investors
Small = JIT (Just In Time) purchasing
7) Analysis - Research and insight
Next topic:
Consider Accenture's position on uCommerce – for “ubiquitous”