THOUGHTFUL RAMBLING No. 9
"The Faceoff For Facebook"
When did a billion dollars stop sounding like a lot of money?
If you believe published reports, sometime in the next 72 hours, either Google or Microsoft will pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion for as much as a 10 percent stake in Facebook. Pretty impressive for a four-year-old company led by a 23-year-old CEO.
The prize is hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue on one of the hottest social networking sites on the web. That, and if you are Google, the pleasure of unraveling the advertising deal Microsoft presently enjoys with Facebook. The thing is, even with all that, I’m still not sure I understand it. Not to the tune of a billion dollars plus.
I have a page on Facebook. I check it almost every day. And I think there are some fun and interesting aspects to it. I like the ability to share pictures, though I can do the same thing with KodakGallery.com. I like that I can follow my favorite teams and presidential candidate, though ESPN.com and FoxNews give me the same ability. I like that I can communicate with my friends, or at least the ones on Facebook, but I’m certainly more knowledgeable and reliant on Outlook. The biggest thing is, I don’t recall any real advertising or marketing presence. And I pay attention to that kind of stuff.
I was concerned that maybe I just wasn’t getting it. Admittedly, with good reason. When the Facebook rep came to the agency to tell us how to get onto the site, she said we could just use our email address from college. I informed her they didn’t have email when I was in college. She giggled. When I said we didn’t really have computers either, she choked. I think I have dress shoes older than her.
I shared my opinions with a number of friends at the agency and many seemed to share my observations. The working Moms all said they simply don’t have the time.
But clearly someone does. According to Datamonitor, global active memberships in social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are expected to reach 230 million by the end of 2007. What’s even more incredible, is that all that explosive growth is expected to peak by 2009 and plateau by 2012. Seems a bit scary to wager a billion five on a segment expected to stop growing in five years. But hey, someone clearly sees the value in all this. The cash infusion aside, Facebook is apparently looking for new ways to monetize the traffic on its site and has planned to make an announcement regarding online advertising, November 6.
For their sake, I hope it’s a doozy! I really don't want to have to rebuild my page on some other site.
"The Faceoff For Facebook"
When did a billion dollars stop sounding like a lot of money?
If you believe published reports, sometime in the next 72 hours, either Google or Microsoft will pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion for as much as a 10 percent stake in Facebook. Pretty impressive for a four-year-old company led by a 23-year-old CEO.
The prize is hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue on one of the hottest social networking sites on the web. That, and if you are Google, the pleasure of unraveling the advertising deal Microsoft presently enjoys with Facebook. The thing is, even with all that, I’m still not sure I understand it. Not to the tune of a billion dollars plus.
I have a page on Facebook. I check it almost every day. And I think there are some fun and interesting aspects to it. I like the ability to share pictures, though I can do the same thing with KodakGallery.com. I like that I can follow my favorite teams and presidential candidate, though ESPN.com and FoxNews give me the same ability. I like that I can communicate with my friends, or at least the ones on Facebook, but I’m certainly more knowledgeable and reliant on Outlook. The biggest thing is, I don’t recall any real advertising or marketing presence. And I pay attention to that kind of stuff.
I was concerned that maybe I just wasn’t getting it. Admittedly, with good reason. When the Facebook rep came to the agency to tell us how to get onto the site, she said we could just use our email address from college. I informed her they didn’t have email when I was in college. She giggled. When I said we didn’t really have computers either, she choked. I think I have dress shoes older than her.
I shared my opinions with a number of friends at the agency and many seemed to share my observations. The working Moms all said they simply don’t have the time.
But clearly someone does. According to Datamonitor, global active memberships in social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are expected to reach 230 million by the end of 2007. What’s even more incredible, is that all that explosive growth is expected to peak by 2009 and plateau by 2012. Seems a bit scary to wager a billion five on a segment expected to stop growing in five years. But hey, someone clearly sees the value in all this. The cash infusion aside, Facebook is apparently looking for new ways to monetize the traffic on its site and has planned to make an announcement regarding online advertising, November 6.
For their sake, I hope it’s a doozy! I really don't want to have to rebuild my page on some other site.
posted by Michael Tuggle at 7:39 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home