Ian Swanson: The Fate of Social Networks

>> Sunny Gault : Hi welcome to Dog and Pony. I'm Sunny Gault. The popularity of social networking sites continues to explode. Chances are, you're probably a member of several yourself but if it weren't for the efforts of Ian Swanson, CEO of Sometrics, many of those companies would crumble. Tell me a little bit about Sometrics. What are the goals for your company?

>> Ian Swanson: So the first company to come out there with a really robust analytics platform, specifically for the social media environment. So we work with Facebook app developers, niche social network sites, to really dive in deep and say who are these people? How are they using these sites? And then we pair that data with brands and advertisers so that we can say, okay now that we understand who these people are, let's help you target these people to serve ads that are maybe more in tune to what they really want to see.

>> Sunny Gault: What type of information are you typically gathering for your client?

>> Ian Swanson: Nothing that's personally identifiable. So let's start with that, so we're very privacy conscious. So I'm not able to say this is the influencing, this is social security number, this is email address, like by all means enter that data. But we are able to say this is somebody who's 28 years old, who lives in Hermosa Beach, who is married, who likes the movie Iron Man, who likes the Lakers, and likes Nirvana and Green Day.

>> Sunny Gault: So what would happen if Sometrics never existed?

>> Ian Swanson: If Sometrics did not exist, these publishers of these social networks sites would have trouble making money. That's the bottom line. And so we connect the dots of this third party stamp with the data, the targeting technology to brand dollars. Which is huge in this space.

>> Sunny Gault: So who are your clients?

>> Ian Swanson: It's two sides of the equation. It's brands come to us because they need an audience, and the publishers they want to make more money. So they need the brand advertising dollars. So they range from Facebook developers that are in a garage, these are 3 Stanford kids that built a Zombies application that actually 12 million people use, which is kind of crazy - to agencies in New York; 50 people, 100 people agencies that build sites and applications for companies like FedX, H and R Block, Priceline, and so they see the social media space as this is where all the eyeballs are going. And so if we're able to get after these people in the social media environment, then they're going to say we really like this and they're going to tell all their friends.

>> Sunny Gault: How's your personal life changed as a result of being CEO of this company?

>> Ian Swanson: I don't have much time as I used to, or for things that I like to do. At the same time it's exciting starting the company where a year ago there were 3 of us, and now there's 25 people at the end of this week. Everyone is just so ... so much enjoys the company. Everyone has a passion for the vision and that's fun.

>> Sunny Gault: What do you think the future of social networking is?

>> Ian Swanson: There's now starting to be more openness and more tools such as what we're providing at Sometrics, to help them pair their data with their neighbors. And so if I'm dogster dot com, the social network for dog lovers, I'll want to team up catster or another dog social network site and combine that level of reach. AT and T's not going to advertise on a site that only has a million users. And so we combine, we aggregate all those numbers of all the niche, all the smaller social network sites and make them into one very large social network site.

>> Sunny Gault: So is there good money to be made through social networking sites?

>> Ian Swanson: Yeah, the brand exposure is unbelievable. So they pay for the initial advertisements. Because you're there when people are communicating and are talking with each other and they're all friends, you get this kind of second level of advertising. The word of mouth marketing that goes around in advertisement; it just pays huge for them.

>> Sunny Gault: Why are you so passionate about social networking?

>> Ian Swanson: What's so great about it is ... that the dinosaurs that have been out there and I don't want to name names necessarily, but let's say the Yahoo homepage; it's just a news portal. That's it. I can't necessarily share information or say hey I really love this story, Jennifer you should check out this story too. There's no connections there and so Facebook and these other social network sites, there's a passion that goes around content and there's a way to share that passion with people.

>> Sunny Gault: Ian Swanson, thanks for joining us today. And as always, if you have question, comments, or ideas for guests please email info at dog and pony dot com. I'm Sunny Gault, thanks for watching.