Radiohead, Kylie Minogue, 50 cent launch social networking sites

by Rob Peters | April 4, 2008 at 09:19 am

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Status Update: Radiohead is...fitter, happier, and more productive since launching a social networking site yesterday. But they're not the only ones with a web 2.0-style fanclub. Kylie Minogue, 50 cent and Ludacris also have some online marketing machines of their own.

QUESTION: at what point does the social networking thing become a saturated market? People can only come up with so many passwords.

Well, “pulling a Radiohead” just came to mean a whole lot more than a pay-what-you-want album model. Late yesterday, the band launched its own social-networking site, W.A.S.T.E. Central. And like most things Radiohead, the site came without warning, suddenly popping on the internet out of nowhere.

Like most social-networking sites, W.A.S.T.E. Central comes packed with all the usual features: a central site area, your own private space, blog and message board options, and the ability to upload content like songs, photos and videos. The site also collects all the uploaded Radiohead-related clips on one convenient page, and contains an up-to-date tour listings area. And above all, you can add—or delete—all your other Radiofriends; after all, this is a social-networking site. In a sense, Radiohead have taken this now-familiar model, and invented a Fanclub 2.0.

On Thisis50.com, fans can create profiles and friend lists just like on MySpace, but 50 Cent has direct access to the site's users and their e-mail addresses.

More and more acts, from Kylie Minogue to Ludacris to thePussycat Dolls, are launching their own social networks, whichare becoming a sort of next-generation version of artist Websites.

The social networking component gives fans a reason to hangout on a site and visit more often than they would a standardWeb site. And artists can sell advertisements on their sitesand offer downloads and merchandise for sale -- options theydon't have on MySpace or Facebook. Plus, they own the contentand data on how fans use their site, which they don't get onother social networks.