The Internet Drives Our Thirst For Narrative.

Every business, foundation, technology and especially every brand, requires a story.
People remember story long after they have forgotten the product.
All good salesmen know this.

Social Networking, the Social Graph & Revenue

Seems to be a lot of air in this bubble. As far as I can tell the only monetization strategy is in selling the company to Google.

I recently attended a wonderful talk by Bernardo Huberman, HP Senior Fellow and Director of the Information Dynamics Lab and was struck by his work in social network. For more information, his Web site is within HP labs.

Some firm (outside of Cisco) will find a way monetize this network activity, until then the successful revenue model is still up for grabs. It’s no news that advertising is cyclic. Check the history of the broadcast networks. For advertisers the youth demographic of MySpace and Facebook is a chimera, of consumer gizmos and beer. Their value is smoke and not sustainable. For example, paying for downloading music trends dramatically towards hits and not albums. Great for Peter Frampton, not so Madeleine Peyroux.

The money is with the aging boomers who buy cars, vacations, weddings, second homes, medical care and financial services. The Holy Grail is getting them into a captive network. Maybe the place to start is My Golden Retriever dot Net or the long tail of Rolling Stone subscriptions.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think there is monetiziation opportunity in niche social networks. You mentioned dog networks, so the dog products people can make hay there. I recently saw a network for book lovers that tempted me. Publishers can advertise there. Maybe over time the broader social networks will subdivide into tribes. Lets call them SIGS, and advertisers can choose targets there. My two cents.