What do you think, Charlie Brown? - a social network turns into a market research entity

As an example of how market research is evolving online, a former social network has turned itself into a market research entity. Peanut Labs, formerly Xuqa, has started to run surveys across numerous social networks after they found it was a more successful business strategy than just relying on revenue through normal social network channels (as well as being squeezed by more popular applications like Facebook and MySpace on this front).

Given that online communities can be large and diverse, there's certainly a lot of attraction in moving to what is a very dynamic and active online environment. However, the question always has to be "is this methodology going to be communicating with the right people?". For some products / clients, social community research through companies like Peanut Labs will be a good fit; for others, there will still be a gap between the audience on social networks and the type of research that needs to be conducted.

- Huw Hepworth