Boinblog | Ramblings from a french entrepreneur

I’ve been waiting for such thing since Fortis launched their own social network (at the time, Facebook wasn’t that big, and MySpace wasn’t an option), but now, Facebook is definitely the place to experiment with social media for big financial companies…

VISA is launching their own network, within the Facebook network, of course, looks like it’s aimed at business networking… why not… Can’t really tell you more righ now, because they seem to be overcrowded by success (or, at least, curiosity), but this could be the start of something big in this sector…

One of the main problem for banks (especialy here in France) is to attract new customer. Since they tend to stay for a very long time in the same bank (if not for life), getting youngsters is a top priority, and therefore, Facebook is the place to be.

Ok, VISA’s not a bank, but you can clearly see where I’m going right now. I’ve been working for the banking and financial industry for 15 years now, and evangelising about social media for the past five years, I even made a blog for Egg plc, when they were still in France, but since then… Nada… Nothing…

Today’s a great day, VISA has dust off a pretty web 1.0 industry, I guess MasterCard is going to do something now, and banks should follow, if they want to avoid a greedy go-between.

More on this in a later post (when VISA’s facebook application will start working again.