I’ve written up my thoughts on a conference I attended last month and will be posting them over the next week or so in chunks. Here’s the introduction:

Keep It Real: Keys to Successful Social Networking

IAB Leadership Forum: User –Generated Content & Social Networking
June 4, 2007

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) hosted a leadership forum on June 4th focused on the topics of user-generated content (UGC) & social networking. The IAB’s most engaging, interesting forum to date, I’ve distilled conference information into what I feel are the high-level takeaways.

Please note that conference participants or sponsors did not necessarily explicitly express many of these conclusions. Rather, I’ve connected the dots on prevalent and related themes from both the conference as well as the current market.

This should also not be construed as the final word on social media, but rather, a conceptual framework from which to approach this fascinating new beast. If creating a successful social network can be likened to playing SimCity, then my thoughts can be considered a suggested strategy for creating a vibrant, revenue-generating, sustainable community where the power grid works, potholes get fixed quickly, and train crashes are rare.

ANP is the General Manager for the Social Network at an award-winning spiritual website that’s hosted community forums and more since its launch in December 1999. The social network is slated to launch in Q4.

A graduate of Yale University, ANP has spent nearly a decade building successful online marketing programs for companies like priceline.com, Eli Lilly & Company, and Citigroup.  Click here to learn more about the author.