Clear Channel is creating niche social networking sites for several of their radio stations across the nation, including San Francisco's KYLD-FM The Wild Space and Chicago's WKSC-FM The Mob, among others.
The social networks are powered by Onesite, a provider of social networking technology solutions for third parties, and handles their backends as well. Onesite also provides similar services for NBC's iVillage. The networks have all the basic social networking functionalities, letting you make friends, comment on media, show videos, and vote on content. These networks grant radio stations and their personalities a better way to connect to their audience and provide additional channels for advertising. As they're now working with Google for ad distribution, this should be especially beneficial.
While many of these radio stations and their personalities have touted profiles on popular sites such as MySpace, having a dedicated niche network of their own is obviously a more lucrative and self-contained manner of reaching out to their target demographic. Niche social networks, especially from those traditional media companies that are growing their online presence, seem to be the best route to go when it comes to continually monetizing their efforts and retaining their audience.