There’s an interesting post on GigaOm by Robert Young (apparently a serial entrepreneur) about a recent MySpace decision to allow advertisers who are concerned about ‘less strict content controls’ on user profile pages to restrict their advertising to the ‘well-lit’ sections such as Books and Games. From the post (my emphasis):

As most now realize, the fundamental problem that social networks face when trying to monetize through an advertising-driven business model is the lack of trust.

In many ways, social networks today, at their current stage of evolution, are much like the currencies of underdeveloped nations… or countries that are politically unstable. In such circumstances, governments must do all they can to create and engender trust among its nation’s constituents and institutions. After all, what is money without the people’s trust… it’s just a devalued piece of worthless paper.

MySpace, and thus other social networks, are in a similar predicament. MySpace in particular, needs to be a catalyst for trust among its users and advertisers. What MySpace needs to do is to tackle the problem head-on by launching programs that ultimately create new levels of trust between its constituents where none existed before.

He goes on to suggest a possible way that advertisers could engender trust by making use of ‘microcelebrities’ - well known people within a small social circle.

The article does make lots of sense. A significant advantage of social networks is that they allow advertisers direct access to people expressing themselves, an idea inherent to the social network model. If advertisers can gain access to this expression they will instantly become trusted, able to serve highly targeted ads which then have a great effect. This will not be achieved by being wary of user-generated content, but by embracing it, understanding it and using it. Once advertisers achieve this, they will make megabucks, and whilst decisions like this made by MySpace might work in the short term, in the long term they are unsustainable.