Thursday, June 25, 2009

Social Networking Redux

Every now and again I pop over to the San Francisco Symphony's newish social networking site just to see what's happening. They're up to 748 members as of today. I see that guest performers are being encouraged to join; Sasha Cook and Alfie Boe, who were in last week's Iolanthe performances, both have memberships.

And Ms. Cook's page shows one of the inevitable issues with social networking sites: A dropped-in come-on from one of the onlookers. It's hard to tell if the fellow is speaking to Ms. Cook or to the woman who posted immediately before him (a member of the Symphony Chorus who has excellent taste in mezzo-sopranos), but it's a bit disconcerting.

2 comments:

Paul H. Muller said...

Well the site is very good looking - they must think it is worth investing some serious effort.

You know, its organized like a Social Networking site so maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that people are trying to do just that. I guess the SF Symphony thinks wants it to be a Social Marketing site...

I've noticed that about Facebook. Some of my fb friends post every little thing about their career or on-line business. Some of us just exchange the odd comment. But your fb style starts to affect the way people see you - hard charging business tycoon or just regular folk. The on-line world is fast becoming the primary mode of communication - at some point you need a balanced presence.

Lisa Hirsch said...

What caught me about the fellow commenting on Sasha Cook's page is that he is, um, a bit clumsy in his approach. That's pretty common in online forums.

I am definitely curious about what SFS hopes to accomplish. Will the site help sell more tickets? Attract new audience members? Are they taking the kinds of measurements that will give them good data about ticket sales? I think they might need Nate Silver to analyze the trends. :)