HGTV Gets It: They're Launching a New Social Networking Site

From ClickZ, one of the best search engine marketing news sites out there, comes the announcment that HGTV is launching a new social networking site called Rate My Room.

Several months ago, I was a part of a conference call with someone I wont name, but he has a fairly popular show on TV that relates to DIY related home improvment. As a part of the conversation, we had a conversation about his target audience, their behaviors, their habits and more importantly, how he could connect with those users on his site. While his site wasn't bad, it had a few videos, it had a lot of great content and he wanted to take his strategy to the next level. I told him about social networking, creating features on his site to submit content, submit videos, vote on projects, add their expertise and even create a wiki of sorts to be a reference. The call went well, but over and over he expressed doubt about letting his viewers participate on his site. He was completely uncomfortable with giving his users that much control over the content. He eventually decided not to go in that direction.

Now, here comes HGTV, they're launching Rate My Room. One of the brilliant things about this move by HGTV is that they have a ready and willing audience who would love nothing more than to interact with each other, giving advice, comparing projects, rating their rooms and household projects. I think it's brilliant. If HGTV adds some expert or celebrity designer interaction within the communities, that could only bring more people to the network.

I truly believe that social media and networking is just one of the ways the internet will change the ways people live, the ways people interact and the ways that marketers and companies communicate with their audience. I really enjoy the fact that the internet has evolved to such a degree that the power of the individual, combined with the voice of their network can influence an industry like marketing, which has for so long, tried to tell the consumer what to do. Marketers have always said that the customer ruled, but only recently have consumers actually felt the power of "ruling".