Social Sites and Online Marketing

Last week we sent out 1,089 quick and dirty email surveys to JibJabbers hoping to uncover some insight about the potential value/efficacy of marketing within various social sites. From this - 606 of the emails were opened and 94 actually completed the survey. This leaves us with a response rate of about 15-16%, something any internet marketer can smile about.

Results for the first question: "Excluding JibJab, what social website(s) do you frequent?"
I had a feeling that a large percentage of our users were on MySpace but what's really interesting was the behavior or lack there of, which followed the very next day. Anyhow, as I reviewed the web analytics report the next morning for JibJab.com I noticed increases within certain metrics, which I logically attributed to the survey as it probably acted on some level as a reminder to come back and visit the site. However, what was a little surprising was to find virtually no change in MySpace traffic and no recognizable increase in "friend requests" despite the mention at the end of the survey asking our users to befriend us. Of course, it was only a text link at the end of the survey (the survey software didn't allow us to include a hyperlink) and only ~90 got to the end, with ~40 being MySpace users, so it's hard to draw major conclusions.

-Ways I could interpret that:

1. MySpace users are unreachable, jaded, lazy or all of the above! Marketing efforts here are a waste of time! But realistically...they're probably just engaged, which means don't give up - the allure of MySpace's fanatical user base just has to be reachable! So...
2. How do we connect with our users via MySpace and other social networking sites? Where is the value? How do we begin to measure ROI? What are the best practices for this? How do we enrich the experience for the end user? How do we capitalize?

Questions that have undoubtedly been echoed by thousands upon thousands of marketers alike. Not too sure where to go from here but my first instinct is to take a serious look at leveraging the excitement around widgets and brainstorm how JibJab might contribute in a meaningful way for the community. I like what Chikita Owna has done with their MySpace and I think their widget is a step in the right direction.