Today I was fortunate to be invited to a breakfast put on by Fairfax Media Ltd. The breakfast was to start the promotion of a new social media site called Connect Pink. They are aiming to launch this new social platform in June.

How is this social platform different from all those others out there? Great question and one that was answered by Ros Marsden, the Sales and Marketing Director of this new initiative.

Instead of just hearing what your friends are up too you will be able to choose to have certain types of news delivered to your feed – categories of news of your choosing. Fairfax are after all in the business of delivering the news. Another way this is different from your run of the mill social media site is that you will be asked to pay a nominal fee to join. This fee will be paid in its entirety to a charity – for the first year the charity will be the McGrath Foundation. There will be other differences but these are the main ones: the addition of news to your feed and having to pay to join.

Connect Pink will also offer businesses the opportunity to set up business pages, aka Facebook business pages. These will also enable the businesses to market to a very targeted local market & just like Facebook, participants in Connect Pink will be able to share the businesses they like with their friends – recommendation marketing. Extra widgets will be available to business to help them to market to their target markets – at this time there are four widgets: SMS marketing, online catalogue, downloadable vouchers & hot pink deals. To be involved in this new social media platform, business will need to pay an annual fee plus extra fees for use of the marketing widgets. Plus if as a business you would like to reach people outside your geographical area you will need to buy the right to other areas in Australia.

As the name suggests this new social media platform will be aimed at women. Many studies have shown that women make most of the purchase decisions in today’s households and as we also know women are very well represented in current social media like Facebook. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to alienate half the population by making this a ‘women’s thing’, it is the afore mentions women’s buying power that is behind it being a women’s thing.

How successful will this new social media platform be? With Fairfax behind it, you can be sure that it will get a massive kick start as thousands of papers are covered with “Connect Pink” in June. What will happen after the initial injection of Fairfax media blitz? Will people really be prepared to pay to belong to something a little bit like Facebook & Twitter (many people get their news via Twitter) combined? Will businesses opt-in to this new unproven platform that again will cost them as opposed to current social media activity which has little or no cost involved?

I don’t know, would you pay a nominal amount to charity to join ? And if you have a business what would it take for you to hand over your $$ to be able to advertise to a targeted audience like this?

I would say watch this space – we may be seeing the starting of something that will never quite make it off the ground or just maybe start of a whole new adventure in Social Media!