Is the End of Facebook Coming?

Two weeks ago, Rupert Murdoch Tweeted:

"Look out Facebook! Hours spent participating per member dropping seriously. First really bad sign as seen by crappy MySpace years ago."

If anyone knows what the death of a social media network does its Rupert Murdoch, who purchased Myspace in 2005 for $580M, and sold it for much less in 2011.

Is the end of Facebook coming?   I don't think so. 

A writer previosuly argued that her facebook usage was way down, but her instagram usage was way up. This is understandable as users switch from a laptop/desktop based worked to a smart phone world.

 

This does not mean the power of Facebook's social network is disappearing. It is meerly shifting... since Facebook owns Instagram.

While I'd expect facebook "participation" time to keep dropping, that participation time seems less necessary now that our networks are built.  When people we first adding facebook friends, they were searching for new friends, and searching old pictures/posts as they found those friends.  Now that connections are slowing, so will the amount of time spent searching for those connections and about those new connections.  Additoinally, the amount of time spent on the site when using it from your handheld, will certainly be less than when you were accessing through your laptop/desktop.  That does not mean that the number of users is dropping or the value of those users are disappearing.  The social network is that, a network, and as long as people aren't turning off and disconnecting, a drop in usage isn't that big of a deal.




Is MySpace's Data Worth More Than Its Traffic?

Like most people, I haven't visited my MySpace page in years. But when I signed up, I supplied them with a lot of personal information, such as age, address, maybe even favorite music. The value of the company, based on traffic that viewed its advertising, plummeted from its sale price to News Corp of over $500m to around $30m when it was recently sold.

The loss of value was shocking to the industry, and it makes me wonder if, with all the experts and management takeovers in recent years, relaunches and new strategies, did they miss an obvious source of revenue that the new investors will reap?

A few things we know about MySpace: it had hundreds of millions of users, mostly 15-25, starting in about 2005. Based on their previous behavior, maybe there are future values to this data that has not been accounted for, or even considered a possibility.
That is, what about email marketing to those addresses?

For example, MySpace knows when a lot of people are going to graduate high school and college in the next few years. With so many users, a student loan email may not convert many people but those it did would have high value. MySpace knows when certain users are getting driver's licenses and getting to be legal age.

These might be lowest-common-denominator sort of products, but MySpace was already famous for that. These are very elementary examples of behavior that could be gleaned from their data. There must be something in there... seems like a steal, $30m for such a vast trove of data from around the globe. The speed of the company's life cycle means a lot of this info is still valid, to look on the bright side again.

With Their Powers Combined...

With Twitter clocking in at 55 million monthly visitors in October of 2009, and businesses all but christening it the future of the real-time news industry, Yahoo is following Microsoft's Bing and Google in being the latest of the search engines to strike a partnership with the blooming social media giant. The Yahoo homepage already allows users to update their status on the other major social networking sites of Facebook and MySpace, and the new partnership will allow users to access Twitter feeds and update their personal tweets all through Yahoo. The search engine is also adding an additional feature: if a user has allowed certain actions such as commenting on or rating articles to appear on Yahoo Updates, those same actions have the ability to automatically be shared on Twitter.



In addition to allowing easy access for updating users' personal accounts, Yahoo is allowing its News, Finance, Entertainment and Sports sections to be updated with the latest news from Twitter. In a way, with these moves, Yahoo is acknowledging the risk that Twitter poses to the internet search engine. With Twitter's ability to present news, trends and topics in real-time, Yahoo's partnership may be an attempt to avoid the risk of users turning away from Yahoo and towards Twitter in their online searches for real-time information.



Check out the article here:



http://paidcontent.org/article/419-yahoo-to-announce-broad-twitter-partnership/

MySpace and YouTube Artists Coming To A Venue Near You

I was reminded of Hannah ‘s comment about how Etsy (the “Amazon” of the craft world) had recently gone from being just a “clicks” business to also being a “bricks” one by providing in-person craft lessons at its Brooklyn location last night. I was looking through this week’s Time Out New York when I found listings for live performance by two different Internet sensations. The first of these listings was for a standup comedy show featuring a “MySpace Comedian” named Owen Benjamin 5. From the listing, I was able to gather that MySpace regularly showcases different performers and that this was part of a series. I assume that MySpace is probably getting a cut of the profits and is probably doing these kinds of shows in other cities around the country. The second listing was billed as a live musical performance by a “YouTube Sensation” (unfortunately, I can’t seem to find the ad to provide more details) and appeared to be something that the artist had organized/ done promotion by himself.

Live performances such as these illustrate how social media is transforming every aspect of the entertainment industry from promotion, to distribution, and even retail. With the widespread adoption of these platforms by consumers and the low barrier of entry (cost, labor, etc.), it seems like many artists these days are able to completely cut out the middlemen (record producers, agents, etc.). I wonder what this will ultimately mean for the entertainment industry. Will the majority of artists stop hiring these agents and use social media to manage the content themselves? Or, perhaps, will there be a growth in agencies that specialize in social media content management? Will YouTube, MySpace, Twitter and other social media platforms also starting sponsoring live performances? I suspect that that the answer is “yes” to all of these questions, and the real question we should be asking is "when?"

What’s in a Domain Name

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MySpace... how do we really monetize them and other social networks...

I came across this article (http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=136617) of how Vitaminwater is linking up with MySpace Music to offer free mp3 downloads for the people who buy their new line, Sync. It's great news for drinkers of Sync and serves as a very effective campaign for Vitaminwater, especially with the large following in MySpace.

However, if you read the article a little further, it actually goes into the large question that social networking sites face. How do we monetize them? Labels who've invested in MySpace music is frustrated that even though there are 27 million unique visitors, those who actually download music are few and far between. (which also goes to what we learnt in class: What metrics should we really use to measure performance? The number of unique visitors is impressive, but it's not drawing in the $$...)

Even in a recent interview with Fortune magazine, both the Facebook founder and Chief Operations Officer (whom used to work at Google), acknowledged openly that they have no idea how to effectively monetize the sites. What was weird to me was that the venture capitalists are not in a hurry to get their return on investment as well.

I'm pretty sure there are monetization opportunities (advertisers, sale of apps, games), but the key challenge is for the users (like us) who'd pick up the tab and use them. Till they reach a critical mass of paring-users, it may seem that it would be very far down the road before the money comes in for them.

MySpace Music Portal to launch iTunes competitor

While The New York Post was incorrect in its prediction that MySpace's iTunes competitor was to launch last week, today Reuter's reported that discussions of a joint venture between MySpace and three major music companies hot and heavy.

Reuter's reports that Sony BMG, Warner, and Universal have signed into the joint venture that is to launch within the next five days and is structured to be a mix of digital downloads and revenue sharing on advertising.

Attracting more than 15 million unique monthly visitors (as reported by comScore), MySpace's biggest strength could arguably be its music section and artists pages. Currently, MySpace's music portal only focuses on new music promotion and tour date information and captures some revenue by linking visitors to iTunes to purchase music.

This new joint venture seeks to directly compete with iTunes and seeks to tie together all forms of making money from digital music by allowing users to buy digital downloads in MP3 format, buy related products such as ringtones and videos, and see and hear ad-supported streaming video.

What is most interesting about this joint venture is its business model:
"… Unlike most music licensing agreements, which require upfront advances, no money is expected to change hands. Instead, the labels are trading content rights in exchange for minority equity stakes in MySpace Music and the chance to participate in the advertising revenues that News Corp. hopes to generate from the service."

Sources: Mashable, Reuters, New York Post

Facebook Fatigue?

Just in case you don't read all of your industry e-newsletters, here's a compilation of articles about Web 2.0 superstar Facebook. Once an also-ran to the MySpace juggernaut, it has gained tremendous momentum in the past 9 months and is clearly being viewed as the company to beat in Social Networking. Here's just a sample of what's being reported on and speculated about the company:

Facebook: New Threat to LinkedIn? (Just An Online Minute)
http://blogs.mediapost.com/online_minute/?p=1576

Facebook Charges Forward (USA Today)
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2007-10-02-facebook-suitors_N.htm

Facebook "Barnacles" Find Success (The New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/technology/04facebook.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=technology

Three Warnings For Facebook (Wired)
http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/10/three-potential.html

Facebook Grabs Fed-Up MySpace Users, Lifting Value (Bloomberg)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8RinPzEzIPQ

Facebook Initiative Will Help Define Digital Future (MediaDailyNews On Media)
http://blogs.mediapost.com/on_media/?p=18

Facebook Targets Musicians (Just An Online Minute)
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=68803

Would love to ready anyone's predictions on the future of the Social Networking space. Will Facebook topple both MySpace and LinkedIn? Will Microsoft value the company at over $10B? Can Facebook actually develop a sustainable business model?

My Space is starting to block third party widgets

I read this article about MySpace blocking Imeem, some popular widget that you can use. This is the just the last of a series of blocked widgests: Vidilife, Stickam and Revver. It seems that MySpace don't want anyone to make money from their huge base of users.

How will this movement affect our last speaker?

MySpace: Design Anarchy That Works

The social-networking site is no looker, and the freedom it gives users leads to some pretty loud results. But that may be the secret to its success

It came late to the market -- so late, in fact, that by the time it launched, people were already declaring the product category dead. It offered no new technology -- virtually every feature of the site was an imitation of something someone else had already done. It looked amateurish, lacking even the most basic level of visual consistency and appeal, never mind the high-gloss polish of its venture-backed competitors.

It seemed like an also-ran. But in less than two years it built up a community of more than 20 million users. And then it sold for half a billion dollars.

The site is MySpace, a social-networking space where people connect with their friends and make new ones as they share their interests and personalities through the blogs, photos, comments, video, and audio they post. MySpace has developed a particular appeal for young people because the site makes it especially easy for bands to set up pages to communicate with their fans.

Read the entire article.

I found this article particularly interesting given my distaste for MySpace and its poor design concept.

Health as a Social Bond

Here's a community idea that actually makes sense: it's not just another MySpace clone. PatientsLikeMe aims to build communities around "life-changing diseases". I think this is a great idea for a lot of reasons.

Above all, it's a great cause - which also makes for a highly motivated community. Anyone who has been seriously ill knows the first thing you do is seek out the experiences and advice of others - not raw medical knowledge, but how people like you have coped and adapted to the impact of this kind of thing. Sadly, the information out there tends to be clinical - raw medical definitions and info - or downright depressing. The people who post tend to be the most awful stories - not those who would form a natural support group.

That these communities can share support and stories of coping, as well as information, is heartening. It also, quite frankly, makes for a lucrative demographic for medical marketers. People with life changing diseases often have lifelong medical needs or special needs of some sort: diet, travel, etc. So it would seem to be a good cause and a good business.