London, April 4:

The rise of online social networks such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook hasbeen one of the most dramatic developments on the web over the past few years. But the business world has struggled to come to terms with the growth in user-generated content such as blogs and video diaries.

Representatives from across the business community will descend on London this week to discuss how to interact with this new, growing and already very important audience at the Blogging4Business conference. The sheer size of online communities such as MySpace has already brought Google and Yahoo! into the-se sites, looking to attract new users to their search engines. But there is a much wider opportunity for brands and businesses presented by growing community of bloggers and creators of user-generated content.

Matthew Yeomans, director of Custom Communication and organiser of the conference, says businesses are trying hard to understand the rapidlychanging world of social media. “Even the mainstream media is having trouble keeping up with what is going on, so what chance does a corporate communications officer in a large company or an account director at a marketing services or PR agency have?”

Much that has been written about the blogosphere has focused on the threat posed to companies by individual consumers, who suddenly have a voice which they can use to complain about a particular product or service. Sites such as NTL:Hell (now CableHell since NTL’s rebranding) in the UK, which chronicled the trials and tribulations of consumers who found themselves struggling with the cable company’s poor service, have garnered a lot of coverage. But Yeomans also points to the opportunities available online. The blogosphere, for instance, represents possibly one of the largest untapped reservoirs of market research.

The fact that the key youth audience is abandoning traditional media such as television in favour of on-demand services such as YouTube alsomeans that advertisers will have to understand these new forms of social interaction.

Anthony Mayfield, head of content and media at the online marketingfirm Spa-nnerworks, said, “Everyth-ing is changing about how media works; we are moving from an age of channel media — where infrastructure and content and distribution is owned by organisations — to one where everybody can play a part. That does not mean those organisations go away; there are just a lot more people out there creating and distributing content.”

That change from the old model of one media outlet ‘broadcasting’ to the masses demands a shift in the way that brands and businesses try to get their message across. “What living in an online world is all about is living in networks. I do not mean MySpace but living within networks of inter-related sites,” said Mayfield.

Last week, Spannerworks announced the launch of Network Sense, a web-ma-pping tool that allows businesses to track their brands across the networks so they can build up a map of their position in cyberspace.