Not really having a business model, social media is turning into a tool for promotion rather than a tool for collaboration. With the great use of social media such as Facebook, MySpace, Digg, WordPress, Reddit, etc. a new form of advertising has arrived an is called social media optimization. This method consist of increasing visibility through the use of social networking websites which on its turn introduces the concepts of online reputation management where organizations or individual pay close attention to their online presence. Our inquiry here is to find out the benefits offered to an “active social networker” besides the “fun factor” associated with social networking.

Social media can be used as a tool for “word of mouth” marketing. In fact, social networking is the virtual equivalent of talking, only people don’t use air but the Internet as a media for transmitting their words! Matter of fact, social networking is a very green way of gathering. As a result, online marketers can take advantage of the huge traffic around social networking websites to post messages and have them heart by a great number of visitors and this with little effort. This can at least be used as a way of directing a great number of visitors to one’s website. In other words, it is like being indexed on a search engine, only the effect is much more immediate. The other benefit of this method is in creating links to the website, which will most likely increase page ranking on search engines. Isn’t this marvelous?

From now on, two facts will have to be understood: 1) there will be two types of users in social media: one that produces marketing-oriented-messages and another that will consume these messages (along with the consumption of the initial “fun factor”); 2) marketers will be in war with each other for having a better “social media presence”.

And like all wars, this one has something to do with resources. Here, resources are the size of a network. The bigger a network of interconnected users, the more likelly a merketing-oriented-message will be viewed by consumers. We now can answer our initial question about the “real” benefits in being an “active social networker”.

Since popular social networkers have “louder voices” in the virtual airspace, they are “more valuable resources” to the online-marketers. Having them exclusively sponsor a website means having more people visit their website an not competing websites. Naturally, Online-marketers will want to put their hands on the exclusive allegiance of these social networkers.

The open nature of social networks gives great bargaining power to the social networker when it comes to valuating his services: he is very aware of his relative weight compared to other social networkers. Associations can be created to increase this bargaining power in front of online-marketers and investors.

Whether this scenario is initially planned by active members of social media or not, once again, social competence seems to be an important asset.