DSM and Social Networking

Are you curious about this increasingly ever-present catch phrase called "Social Networking"?

...About Facebook, Twitter, Myspace & Yelp, to name a few of the more than 1000+ and growing networks online?

Think of all the ways you network in real life--jobs, friends, family, etc... Social networking sites are simply a way to contact and connect people more quickly online; like a giant interactive phone book! Here is a quick 1:48 long video entitled "Social Networking in Plain English" that may also help to illustrate this type of networking.

How does DSM use Social Networking?

Like most any technology and marketing, there are nearly unlimited ways to use Social Networking.

DSM uses it to carry on conversations with our patrons: Advance special announcments, alerts, customer care questions, and also simply for performing arts enthusiasts to have another way to interact with one another.

We primarily use Facebook, Twitter, Yelp & Myspace as a way to bring information to where people are. We know life is very busy and you may not always have an opporunity to get to our website. And we also know that millions of people are daily checking their "social sites" daily like email. As a convenience we have established a presence on the sites listed above, not to replace our site by any means, but to enhance the ease of our value patrons being able to quickly gain the information they are looking for.

Below, you'll find basic primers about the Social Networking sites we use:

FACEBOOK
From Wiki: Facebook is a popular, free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. The website's name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook while he was a student at Harvard University. Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Ivy League. It later expanded further to include any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 140 million active users worldwide.

Facebook on Reuters Download 7 things to know about Facebook 7 more thing to know!

TWITTER
From Wiki: Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, or email, or through applications such as Tweetie, Twinkle, TwitterFox, Twitterrific, Feedalizr, and Facebook. Four gateway numbers are currently available for SMS: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, and a United Kingdom-based number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email. Twitter had by one measure over 3 million accounts and, by another, well over 5 million visitors in September 2008, a fivefold increase in a month.

Twitter on Time.com Download 7 things to know about Twitter

YELP
From Yelp.com: Yelp is...

...the ultimate city guide that taps into the community's voice and reveals honest and current insights on local businesses and services on everything from martinis to mechanics.

...just real people, writing real reviews, and that's the real deal.

...a fun and engaging place for passionate and opinionated influencers to share the experiences they've had with local businesses and services.

...the definitive local guide in the Dallas, San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle... But really, we're everywhere in the U.S. and now Canada & the U.K.! From Austin to Edmonton and everywhere in between, reviews are coming in from all over!

...word of mouth marketing - amplified. Savvy local marketers now have a great channel to effectively target local consumers.

MYSPACE
Myspace is kind of grand-daddy of modern social networking sites.
From Wiki: MySpace is a free social networking website with an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California, USA, where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, Fox Interactive Media; which is owned by News Corporation, which has its headquarters in New York City. In June 2006, MySpace was the most popular social networking site in the United States. According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken internationally by main competitor Facebook in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors. The company employs 300 staff and does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 6, 2006 in the Netherlands and the site counted approximately 106 million accounts on September 8, 2006. MySpace.com attracts 230,000 new users per day.

Shortly after MySpace was sold to Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox news and 20th Century Fox, in 2005 they launched their own record label, MySpace Records, in an effort to discover unknown talent currently on MySpace Music. Regardless of the artist already being famous or still looking for a break into the industry, aspiring artists can upload their songs onto MySpace and have access to millions of people on a daily basis. Some well known singers such as Lilly Allen and Sean Kingston gained fame through MySpace.
The availability of music on this website continues to develop, largely driven by young talent. Over eight million artists have been discovered by MySpace and many more continue to be discovered daily.