Marketers are getting on board the social-media trend with their own networking sites for brand aficionados.
They may also attract critics, but it's a risk marketers believe they need to take. The branded sites won't rival mega social sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which already have millions of users, but complement them. Marketers spent about $1 billion to advertise their brands on such sites in 2008, according to eMarketer.
The next step is creating destinations that people can leap to from those ads and form user groups about the brand.
"Marketers are creating social networks that have lots of legs," says Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer. "They have one in Facebook, one in Twitter that links back to a corporate site. They don't expect to do all their social networking in one site."
Volkswagen, Tropicana and marker brand Sharpie are among brands with new social-networking sites that give people tools, blog capabilities and insider access to offers.
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