Pardon the interruption...

The rise of social network sites like facebook, myspace, and twitter have created a new medium of messaging (notice I didn’t say advertising) in order to develop, build and maintain relationships between business and customer.

The important thing to remember is how (and why) the medium started. In the case of facebook, it was started as a way for college students to write (on a virtual wall) and connect with friends online. It started at Harvard, spread to the rest of the Ivy League schools and then to the rest of the college crowd It then spread virally through the web to anyone who was interested in connecting with friends and family. The key to keep in mind is that it is a social site, designed to help people connect with other people.

The same thing with Twitter. It was based on a simple question: “what are you doing?”

Now businesses from the fortune 500 to the local deli are looking to see how they can invade these sites to do more business. The irony is that the success of many of these sites is the result of consumers being tired of being bugged by the over 5000 ad impressions they are bombarded with each day.

This type of ‘interruptive’ advertising is being challenged in a way that is really game changing. When you thing about it, most of the traditional types of advertising models are being marginalized by technology.

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