New Social Networking Loophole/Discovery

As a marketer, I'm always looking for new opportunities or new ways to utilize existing media. Social networking at this point is the new "it" thing. I recently discovered a way to utilize a functionality of social networking sites to drive more traffic to your company, as well fully utilize your product placement.

I ultimately envision one day commerce will be able to grant us instant gratification. You can be watching TV and see a great dress that Lindsay Lohan is wearing, and you'd be able to buy that exact dress instantly from the TV's interface. Anything we see or even hear on any existing media can be instantly purchased. What is that shirt George Clooney is wearing on TV? Highlight it and you can buy it instantly. The song your currently hearing on the radio can be instantly downloaded.

Social sites like Myspace.com have implemented a functionality in their photo album section that can easily be exploited. You can now tag your photos to identify individuals on that image. For example, in a photo of you and your friends, you can tag each of the individual friends so that it can link back to their individual profiles. As soon as you tag them, the individual friend will get an alert asking them if they would like to add that tagged photo in their own photo albums. The beauty of this functionality is that if they approve, not only will the photos be uploaded in their albums, but also all the other corresponding tags.

I know that this was meant for tagging humans, but what's to stop you from tagging the shirt, jeans or shoes that this individual is wearing on the photo? As long as this product has a corresponding profile on Myspace, you'd be able to link to it, thus driving traffic to that product's myspace site. Let's use a very popular member of Myspace, Tila Tequila for example. If say you got her to wear a hat that you are selling and have a photo, you can upload the photo in your site's photo album. In the photo, you can tag Tila as well as the hat, so that there's a link-back. Upon tagging Tila's pic, she will then get an alert to approve the photo to be uploaded on her own photo album. If you happen to be lucky enough for her to approve, then the photo will be in her album for her and all her millions of friends to see. But guess what? Your tag for your hat will also be included. They can all highlight the hat and know where to purchase it for themselves.

The application for this loophole is endless! In the future we can know exactly where to buy all the gear that our favorite celebrities are rocking all over the internet. All photos on every website will be equipped with a tagging functionality.