FriendRank offers potential for social advertisers

24/06/2008

A new social advertising system has been introduced by a small firm based in San Francisco.

The FriendRank system from SocialMedia Networks makes use of an algorithm that calculates which social networking website users are most influential over their friends by examining the way they interact with certain applications, CNET News.com reports.

These influencers are then targeted by businesses with marketing messages in the hope that they will encourage others to look at the product or service in question.

While the system may offer a brand new way of monetising social networks, privacy concerns have been raised in some quarters.

However, Dave Gentzel of SocialMedia explained in a blog post that the company does not access personal user data at any point and that people can choose to opt out of the system.

"The fundamental reason people dislike advertising is because they think it takes advantage of them. This is especially true when individuals are inside ads," he said.

"But our goal is not to put people inside of ads as a gimmick, as gimmicks die and provide little value to anyone."