Huge international growth from Facebook has brought it alongside MySpace in the social network field. Each has about 115 million unique visitors a month.
The latest comScore data demonstrates a very robust spring for Facebook growth, but it is principally outside of the U.S., where MySpace maintains a very substantial edge --- 72 million to 36 million (although that latter number is up from 23 million only a year ago).
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckenberg is striking a more conciliatory tone today in the open-source ID skirmish that Google Friend Connect ignited.
He said in Tokyo today that Google introduced the portable utility --- which essentially takes your Facebook information off for a ride --- without first consulting Facebook, and that his company has concerns that personal information will be shared without the user's knowledge.
Having said that, the CEO isn't stirring the pot. Google makes good products and there ought to be a way to work with them, he observed. They just need to talk.
Arguably the most significant conflict in social media history has erupted. It all started with a seemingly friendly --- as in the fledgling Google Friend Connect --- salvo that has alarmed Facebook to the point that it is denying service to the new social application.
Google followed both Facebook and MySpace into a three-day announcement binge on forms of data portability. They're all essentially efforts to grant wider distribution of curated data, and naturally there is plenty at stake.
Google's gesture has Facebook in a bind, in that Facebook users' data suddenly can't be transported to other applications. Which raises the question: Whose data is it --- the users' or the users' application? On that simple plain, Facebook users are bound to be scratching their heads soon.
It is, of course, a little less simple than that. If data is portable, what use is Facebook or MySpace or Twitter? They need that information --- the social graph --- to stay put so they can figure out how to mine it. In essence they're saying: You're in our home, and regardless of how you decorated it and socialized in it, it's still our home and you can't just leave.
Now, there are services like Zude that are doing this by stealth. But when Google knocks, the house shakes.
With a nice snippet of code and a thinking-ahead strategy, Google is essentially offering to pry loose information from other applications to an open source that would, in theory, also deliver advertising. How Google Friend Connect fares is secondary to the strategy of creating more open source identification applications --- which, in turn, plays into Google AdSense. At least, that's the best guess at the strategy.
When Eric Schmidt talks, everyone listens. And when the Google CEO acknowleges the company's $1.65-billion takeover of YouTube has yet to produce a revenue model, everyone should be paying attention.
No matter that YouTube is the brand leader and has all the familiarity of Facebook and MySpace, the world's largest Internet company hasn't found a way to insinuate profit into the picture.
In catching up to his lengthy CNBC interview of this week, it was apparent there are several products to come in the advertising realm but admit the commerce had not caught up to the creativity of YouTube.
A new poll suggests about one-quarter of Canadians believe Facebook plays a more negative than positive role.
Should we be surprised? Social media aren't for everyone, and even among users there are doubters.
The Harris/Decima poll for The Canadian Press found a bit of an age gap in the perception of Facebook --- the older you were, the more likely you were to feel negatively. But, for a service with such rapid growth and such enigmatic qualities (that is, a new wrinkle seemingly each week to its offerings), I thought the poll indicated pretty strong acceptance. About 40 per cent --- and about three-quarters of users --- felt it made a more positive than negative contribution.
News organizations have been struggling to sort through the challenges of social networking and their applications to conventional media. Newsrooms I know use Facebook and MySpace for gathering content, and I belong to Linkedin and other social and professional networks for their excellent connective purposes.
The allure is the interactivity and functionality of sharing content and using generated content. But the downside is, well, no one's really making money on the model.
This week's Economist has a compelling take on how social networks may be a big part of the Internet, but not really a business model.
We journalists often live in denial about advertising. In that denial, it is distressing to know upwards of 80 per cent of any organization's revenue (100 per cent if you're online, in many free-subscription instances) is derived from an advertiser's commitment to your story-telling's capacity to deliver a desired audience.
It stands to reason that if you're going to buy an ad, you want it seen. And while there is great enthusiasm now about the growth in ad revenue online --- a new form of fuel for journalism, presumably, to lead us to a new business model --- there is also alarming concern about ad-averse behaviour by the audience.
This is particularly true on the booming social networks, MySpace and Facebook. Where once about one in 100 ads were clicked through (an indication people are interested in the product or service), there are indications the rate now is about one in 1,000. The latest Business Week examines this disquieting phenomenon, which involves a desensitized audience that is a bit overwhelmed by targeted advertising.
The beauty of technology is its ability to drive messages to a clearly intended target. The trouble is that the target isn't clearly targeted --- there's self-defeating clutter and multi-messaging, and the audience balks at the overload.
But the new model for journalism depends heavily on finding the right balance to create a good digital environment for direct marketers and advertisers. At the moment, even Google acknowledges it hasn't found the ideal model for the social networks.
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