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Mother's Click is coming soon (October 17th); it is the third social network for moms' to launch in the last few months. MommyBuzz arrived in June, on the heels of Club Mom's The Mom Network. There are several new social networking sites that are for moms and dads: Cingo, Minti, Parents Connect, and Family Site. 
All of these new sites seem to offer some variation of MySpace for Moms and/or parents. So, what does it all mean?Â
MySpace, the (pardon the pun) Mother of all social networks and the number one Internet site (Hitwise) has a MySpace Group category called Family and Home and within that category there are over 33,000 groups; most of those groups (most is not meant to be valid or reliable measurement appear to be mommy groups and parent groups with more niches than one could possibly think of in a name-a-social network contest.
Corporations are setting up their own social networks. We have the not yet launched J&J's Mommy Blog Network and P&G 's up and running Vocal Point where the corporations directly sponsor the network. I signed up for Vocal Point and although they say that it is a "community of influential moms" they do not have a question to assess influence on their sign-up page, only questions about the age and number of children that you claim.
 So far, they have sent lots of coupons, mostly for laundry products; must be the teenage boys. And they have asked for my opinion several times. I now know that "influence" is something that you need not bring with you; you get it automatically when you join the network and answer the questions.
For instance this was a link in a recent email, "As part of Vocalpoint, you get to influence the direction of big companies. Today, it's your chance to tell us what you think about a program we're creating for Target and Tide." Well, don't ask me what I told them. I don't really want to influence the direction of big companies unless a check for consulting fees follows. I will say this however, I found the whole thing more than just a little condescending .
And another funny thing, when I worked for packaged companies in the dark ages before on line social networks, we used to pay consumers to come to focus groups and have this kind of influence. Are people really willing to take their valuable time to provide valuable input and influence in exchange for coupons and product samples. According to BusinessWeek, 600,000 moms have signed on to do just that.
Well anyway, there are lots of social networks to choose from, including groups within MySpace. Maybe Facebook will even create a little space for all the parents that are signing up as quickly as the kids are taking down.
Marianne Richmond also blogs at the Resonance Partnership.
Tags: MySpace, Facebook, ClubMom, VocalPoint, P&G, J&J, Marianne Richmond, Minti, MommyBuzz, MothersClick, Hitwise, Cingo, ParentsConnect, Family Site
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