Sometime in November 2007, facebook hit a wall. We know that traffic to the site took a dip in dec/jan as students delved into exams and headed home for Christmas break. But why aren’t they coming back? Searches for facebook have flatlined (note that many users use the google box like an address box).
Could facebook have done a better job of introducing apps and social adds with without flatlining what had been a lovely and long-running exponential growth curve? If so/not Did they pick the right point to cash in on their established audience?
Look at the last quarter of growth rather than the previous 3 years. That audience is worth something. But is that growth curve still worth 15 billion?
A warning signal for social network builders and would-be “lets get an audience first and worry about the revenue model later”. Does your grand monetization strategy fundamentally change the value proposition, feeling and experience that you built your audience on in the first place?
File under I Can’t Has Cake and Monetize it Too
I still don’t know how I got out alive after telling a room full of marketing and PR people at CaseCamp that the “internet was like a great party until the marketers show up”.
I still don’t know how I got out alive after telling a room full of marketing and PR people at CaseCamp that the “internet was like a great party until the marketers show up”.
Cause they know it’s true. 😉
Cause they know it’s true. 😉
The same could be said for anything (x used to be great before marketers show up).
Television (30 min episodes are down to what now? 20-21 minutes?)
DVDs (unskippable previews)
Farmers fields (Billboards)
Need I go on?
Unlike a lot of people on the web, I don’t think marketers/advertisers should take Bill Hicks’ advice – however I do think that they should be a lot more clever and a lot less annoying about it.
Just thinking out loud here, but take the example of billboards – yes, they arguably fill a need (I’m hungry, I don’t know what’s around), but a lot of people now have GPS. Garmin/Tomtom could partner with restaurants to display a simple icon indicating coupons or specials when you are scrolling through a list of restaurants, and you could just show your GPS unit to the drive-thru (or whatever…)
That way, they get their ‘eyeballs’, provide something useful to the customer, and not annoy the rest of us that aren’t craving a Big Mac at that moment with a giant eyesore. The side benefit is perhaps this covers more of their costs, making GPS more affordable to everyone.
It’s the old 80/20 rule… I’d say 80% of successful marketing is done by the same clever 20%… the rest are just spamming and throwing stuff out there randomly in the hopes that their message gets through.
The same could be said for anything (x used to be great before marketers show up).
Television (30 min episodes are down to what now? 20-21 minutes?)
DVDs (unskippable previews)
Farmers fields (Billboards)
Need I go on?
Unlike a lot of people on the web, I don’t think marketers/advertisers should take Bill Hicks’ advice – however I do think that they should be a lot more clever and a lot less annoying about it.
Just thinking out loud here, but take the example of billboards – yes, they arguably fill a need (I’m hungry, I don’t know what’s around), but a lot of people now have GPS. Garmin/Tomtom could partner with restaurants to display a simple icon indicating coupons or specials when you are scrolling through a list of restaurants, and you could just show your GPS unit to the drive-thru (or whatever…)
That way, they get their ‘eyeballs’, provide something useful to the customer, and not annoy the rest of us that aren’t craving a Big Mac at that moment with a giant eyesore. The side benefit is perhaps this covers more of their costs, making GPS more affordable to everyone.
It’s the old 80/20 rule… I’d say 80% of successful marketing is done by the same clever 20%… the rest are just spamming and throwing stuff out there randomly in the hopes that their message gets through.