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.

Web 2.0 Rondo

Students Mimic Pros Mimicking Students

User-generated content, encouraging consumers to create advertising, promotional video clips is the current manifestation of Web 2.0. As the recent CNN presidential candidates’ debate has shown, reporters on TV may soon be displaced by citizens on YouTube.

Marketing messages that were once carefully crafted by professionals are now open to citizen/users. Among the blue-chip marketers taking following this trend are Chevrolet, Frito-Lay, Geico, Heinz ketchup, KFC, Mr. Clean, the National Football League and Verizon Communications.

Such appeal has come full circle in less that two years, with college students imitating the professional marketing people who were following the lead of college students. Fresno State, known nationally primarily for its football prowess asked their students to create video clips to attract applicants. The university called the contest the "I Am Fresno State Video Project," and put up the iamfresnostate.com web site.

Student Bryan Harley captured first place in the student video competition. Winning videos can be seen at college friendly video sharing platforms YouTube and MySpace. Check it out.