I picked up The Guardian this morning and read an interesting article by Mark Sweney about the Financial Times which plans to create an exclusive social network.
The proposed scheme will be a membership only network costing a fee of £2k a year for each lucky networker.
The Guardian describes the membership as including: “attendance at any one FT Global conference plus 20% off subsequent events, face-to-face members’ networking events and a 12-month premium subscription to FT.com.”
Oh I think I should point out that the FTwill also be using your details to target you for anything they possibly can if you join.
“Busy executives in the media and technology industries are increasingly networking, communicating and connecting online and the launch … provides a highly targeted network where executives from these fast-moving industries can connect and share their knowledge,” said Jayne van Hoen, FT conference director
Having read this story I have asked myself one question – why? Why would I join a social network at the cost of £2k a year, when there are already plenty of decent business networks out there which cost nothing?
Social networks such as Facebook and Linked in also have the ability to make themselves exclusive too – so you can have who you want within your particular network. I also don’t really see the value in having a closed network – the only real benefit I can see is actually for the FT, not the user, as the newspaper gets everyone’s details for marketing purposes.
Only time will tell if this will actually be a success – my guess is it will get a few members initially but don’t expect Facebook to be quaking in its boots!
Cross Posted on: Wolfstar
Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.
