If You Build It...They Still Won't Come

Ready for this? Its 3:39am my time (EST) and I'm just lucid enough to type yet tired enough to quite possibly run myself into a hole here. I have to say, there is something trepidatious about straddling the edges of both the marketing and the tech 2.0 digirati sets: one is always behind the other. David Armano of Logic+Emotion, one of my favorite blogs, recently posted on how "micro sites are so 2007" and to "look for distributed content experiences in 2008." While I agree with our man Armano here, I feel a little cheeky in saying so-- but hello, aren't micro sites soooo like early 2006? (This is where I run into trouble as I know how attached NYC interactive ad agencies are to their micro sites). But back to Armano's post, which has some great suggestions for brands delving into the interactive community space-- but the issues I have always taken with brand publishing digital content, or trying to establish their own branded social network is that they do all tend to be, well, crappy no? I still think that at this point, it is still in a brand's best interest to leverage existing content platforms and to widgetize content instead of building a whole new container that must be populated with registrants and daily active users. Go to where your audience is-- don't make us lazy internet users come to you.

Has there been, thus far, a successful effort by a large brand to establish its own content/networking/distribution platform (ie: "branded social networking site")? If so, I would be interested in who and what the success metrics were.

Now, excuse the typos and I'm off to bed. This shall perhaps be revisited in the morning. Until then, widgetize!