I have been thinking about Clear Channel’s initiative to create a social network for its radio listeners a bit more.
Mashable thinks is is a good idea:
While many of these radio stations and their personalities have touted profiles on popular sites such as MySpace, having a dedicated niche network of their own is obviously a more lucrative and self-contained manner of reaching out to their target demographic. Niche social networks, especially from those traditional media companies that are growing their online presence, seem to be the best route to go when it comes to continually monetizing their efforts and retaining their audience.
I wonder about the viability of this, though.
A) It’s Clear Channel - crappy music with annoying DJs all day long (the social networking site is going to focus on Top 40 stations - the wrost offenders of them all)
B) It’s radio. Radio is almost always a background medium. People don’t want to interact with it, except for those freaks who call talk-radio shows. When I watch TV, I might be close to a computer, but most people listen to the radio in their cars and by the time they get home, they will have long forgotten about what the heard on the radio.
People who want to form a social group around music have already done so on Myspace. With so much overlap, what’s the point of starting your own network?
Why does everybody have to re-invent the wheel over and over again?
Additional comments powered by BackType