Recently the whole world's been going crazy over valuations placed on well known social networks. Myspace $65 billion, Facebook $15 billion. All of that is estimated of course, and is based on what people THINK these companies will be worth when they actually find good ways to make money from their huge user base, but what about the small guys? Even though these networks dominate there are still 1000s of other networks that will be looking to monetize their database of users, but how are they going to do that? DirtBagMusic  is a new music based social network that is looking to find ways to moneterize its network. Lots of things will be available to buy "Most music services will be available for $1 or $2, Mark Evans ( senior vice president of business development and marketing with DirtBag Music in San Diego) predicted, with DirtBag reaping a small, undisclosed percentage of each transaction." (source:signonsandiego.com ) . With everyone believing that a crash is just over the horizon for the major record companies, music is one area that social networks could cash in on, because of the huge amount of digital music that is already being purchased online. But not just music, also band merchandise, gigs etc are all revenue channels that can be pursued by music social networks.

Niche. It's a word you will be seeing a lot of over the coming year. Niche social networks are where brand marketeers are going to be looking to place their ad spend in 08. DirtBagMusic is a niche social network, and many more will be popping up, but why niche? The percentage of Ad spend on niche social networks in 07 was 8.2% up from 7% in 07. This year it is predicted to be 10% The reason for this is that advertisers want to target their ad's to specific users, and what easier way to do that then advertise on a niche social network?

Video. Video social networks have always been popular, but something that you will see more of in 08 is advertising specifically based around the subject of whatever the video is. This will take the form of hyperlinks and hotspots ( asterpix.com ) , overlay video links ( ooyala.com , videoegg.com ) to actual in-video ad's. This is all happening because of the huge amount of people viewing video content online. BurstMedia have reported that 7 out of 10 Americans have viewed video content online and young men (prime demographic for advertisers) are viewing that content more then any other group.- aged between 18-24

So the moral of the story so to speak, is if you are thinking of setting up a social network with a view to making money (because a lot don't) think niche and think about how to incorporate video into that network somehow.

---