Web Worker Daily

Here at WWD we see a lot of social networks go by. Some have staying power, some are “me-too” attempts that never gain any traction, many are niche operations of interest to only a few. But this week’s Monday flood of press releases brought something new: a corporation using a social network to collect your opinions. That’s the premise behind Hey! Nielsen, a site from the same Nielsen Company that brings you TV ratings and a host of other marketing products.

The basic premise behind Hey! Nielsen is simple. After joining, you pick something - movie, TV show, famous person, web site - and post your opinion. You also rate whatever you’re posting about on a 1-10 scale. You can comment on other people’s posts and rate your agreement or disagreement with them as well. The site then combines all this buzz together with external statistics (for example, traffic measurements from BlogPulse) and puts together a “Hey! Nielsen score” for each rated thing. And…these ratings go back to the networks and producers as another data point of consumer feedback.

On the technical side, the site is very well done. You can easily find the hottest shows or the ones that are changing in ratings right now. There’s a nifty little timeline control that lets you see how Hey! Nielsen scores and buzz are changing over time. Though it just opened up to the public, the site has been in alpha for a while, and there’s already a fair amount of comment there from folks who are clearly passionate about their TV and movies.

The interesting questions are whether the site will thrive, and whether its model - a corporate-sponsored social network - can and will be replicated if it does. The Nielsen Company has some advantages here that may be tough for others to copy. For one thing, there’s the pent-up demand of people actually wanting to be “Nielsen families” who contribute to the TV ratings (a position you can’t actually volunteer for); becoming active on Hey! Nielsen may serve as the next-best thing. For another, they’re in a position to offer other incentives: “The more heat your postings generate, the greater the chance your opinions will land on the most influential inboxes in the biz as we will be inviting select Hey! Nielsen members to take part in sneak previews and other invite-only events.”

My bet is that Hey! Nielsen will succeed; there are many, many people on the net already who want to share their pop culture opinions, and a well-executed site that promises to funnel those opinions where they count will be an attractive draw. And that success will inevitably give rise to copycats in the C2B (consumer-to-business) social media space. By this time next year, expect to have a choice of numerous social networks wanting to channel your precious opinions back to the advertisers and manufacturers of the world.