If you’re sick of invites to join, say, the Unauthorized Bo Obama Fan Club or install the Send Good Karma application every time you sign into your favorite social networking site, you are far from the only one.
A recent study conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau U.K. and publicized this morning in AdAge found 31 percent of the social networkers surveyed dislike the constant barrage of invitations they receive from their friends on sites like Facebook and MySpace. The second most popular response to the question “What do you dislike about social networks?” was that advertising isn’t always relevant to the user, which 16 percent of respondents said.
Irrelevant advertising will likely become less of an issue as these sites refine the ways they choose the ads they are showing you.
But social media marketers should beware the complaint of too many invitations, which many users see as tantamount to spam in their e-mail inboxes. As one IAB representative said, “Users will not respond to spam or irrelevant advertising.”
The study also offered some guidance on what social networkers want, with 28 percent of respondents saying they would join a group for exclusive content and 37 percent saying they would join if they had a genuine interest in what is being offered.
Mobile Social Networking on the Rise
One more interesting takeaway from the IAB study was the number of social networkers logging on with mobile devices. A full quarter of respondents said they check or update their social network profiles this way, with the number jumping to 44 percent in the 16- to 24-year-old demographic. That number is sure to only rise.