Buzz et al: Consumers aren't buying it

Yesterday's article in Online Media Today discusses Google Buzz's potential to encroach on Facebook and MySpace by offering more expansive opportunities for contextual advertising. Neither of the latter social networking sites offer anything as good or as well-known as YouTube, Flickr, Gmail, Google Docs etc.. etc.. If contextual advertising relies on user data for its effectiveness, Google wins simply because its applications generate more data points than the competition.

But it Google wants to win advertising business, it needs to address a social networking conundrum: Edelman finds that real life social networks are the third most trusted source of company information whereas online social networks are the second to last trusted source for company information. Could it be that online consumers are becoming more resilient to contextual marketing within social networks?