Why so negative?
I am sometimes asked “Ned why are you so negative?” My reply is that I have every reason to because I am constantly inundated with hype and crap in the world of internet marketing and unless you are critical and discerning it is easy to get mislead, wasting a lot of time and money in the process.
Once you pass a certain threshold of knowledge you become very good at detecting hype and flimflam, but a lot of noobs aren’t and they are mislead into buying worthless ebooks, having illusions of grandeur, and so on.
One of the goals of this blog is to dispell a lot of the hype circulating around the web 2.0 and internet marketing world.
I tend to view things from an analytic and economic standpoint preferring objectiveness over subjectiveness.
Fro example, remember when link farms were all the rage? They don’t work any more. If it wern’t for ‘negative’ people dispelling link farms people would still be mislead into joining link farms.
Viral marketing doesn’t work
For some reason that eludes there has been a disproportionate attention and focus on viral marketing. In the news you read about how youtube videos and myspace pages can allow companies and organizations to promote their services for free through viral marketing. Once you ‘get the ball rolling’ the growth should be exponential as more an more people virally spread the message of your product.
Sounds like a good marketing strategy? Maybe, if you’re one of the lucky few who’s message does go viral. Otherwise viral marketing doesn’t work and is a waste of time.
There are countless videos on youtube and myspace with the intent of creating a viral reaction, yet only a tiny, tiny percentage of them ignite any viral response. The remaining videos simply fade away in the ever growing archive of internet crap.
These videos are usually created by experts as well, and in failing to have their video go viral they lose money in the process because the directors are unable to recoup the costs. Not a very good deal.
The same not only applies to internet videos but internet meme’s, social networking sites, and other forms of online media intended to generate a viral response. It just doesn’t work and is a waste of time, as is the case with 99.9% of things.
Here is the lowdown: don’t bother with viral marketing. It doesn’t work. You will just be wasting your time and money. Internet users are INUNDATED with media attempting to generate a viral response. The odds of YOUR video or website capturing their attention, let alone going viral, is slim. Thousands of viral videos uploaded on youtube and myspace a day. There are Tons of new viral websites being created every week, each vying for an infinitesimal sliver of your attention. Obama parody pages, dancing cats, deodorant commercials, enough is enough.
Google must buyout facebook for $30 billion or more
Google is at an important junture in its history. It is poised to conquer online and offline media but it can’t afford to make any blunders, and one such blunder would be to not aquire facebook for $30 billion dollars or more.
While $30 billion may seen obscene for Facebook, a socialnetworking site that only makes $150 million a year in revenue, it isnt. For one, google’s stock has been soaring for the past two months, rising from just $550 to $740 without any sign of slowing. A $30 billion dollar investment would be just 8% of its market cap. And if google rises another 10% its already paid for, all $30 billion of it. So even if facebook somehow falters the loss will be negligible.
Google decision to buyout youtube for 1.6 billion in October 2006 was brilliant. Youtube is easily worth 10 billion now, and has catapulted google in the forefront of online media. back then all the overpaid, dinosaur pundits were calling it a bubble and pverpriced, but in hindsight it wasn’t. And neither is purchasing facebook for 30 billion.
If Google fails to buyout facebook, it is very much possible facebook could supercede google in the next decade. I illustrate such a case in my blog post Facebook worth one trillion?
Facebook could easily develop its own ad delivery service for publishers and advertisers to compete with Adsense and Adwords. Also, the sheer multitude of facebook apps and other widgets will cajole internet users to spend less time surfing the web and clicking ads and spend more time on facebook interacting with the widgets instead. Insead of doing a google search a widget could deliver relevant websites to a facebook user without ever having to leave facebook. The possibilities are endless. Of any company in existance, Facebook poses the most emminant threat to google’s future. Much more so than Yahoo or Microsoft.
In conslusion, it is imperitive that google buyout the remaining 98% or so remaning stake of facebook NOW before the valuation of facebook goes up any more. If google waits another six months it may be too late. Facebook now is like paypal in 2000 or youtube in 2006 or Myspace in 2005. Google has no choice, and it would be a phenomenal business move.
Will social networking have a major impact on 08′ elections? No
Lately there has been an excess amount of hype regarding the contributions and importance of social networking and web 2.0 to the 2008 election. It’s as if somehow cornering the web is crucial to a successful campaign and any candidate that isn’t up to date with the latest social networking web 2.0 gizmo is doomed to failure. Almost every day a candidate seems to gets flak by the high tech community for not having a suffiently interactive website, failing to embrace web 2.0, censoring comments on a blog, or whatever.
But can social networking result in more votes, and a subsequent victory? Will social networking and online campaigning be a deciding factor in the 2008 elections?
The answer is no, and for several reasons.
First, social networks mainly appeal to younger people between the age of 13 and 25. Facebook has an older audience on the upper range of that scale while myspace tends to appeal to younger people. However, that age demographics has the highest percentage of voter apathy, and most people who use social networks aren’t even old enough to vote in the first place. So even if a million myspace users join an Obama Myspace page how many of those ‘friends’ will turn into vortes? Not very many.
Second, people already have made up their mind. If you’re going to vote for Hillary Clinton, a Clinton facebook page isn’t going to have an impact on your vote since you’re already decided who you’re going to vote for. Social networking pages attact people who are already loyal to the candinate, not crucial swing voters.
Third, the candidate can still blunder on TV as was downfall of Howard Dean in 2004. Howard dean had an huge internet following but after infamously screaming following the loss of the Iowa primary, his online legion of fans coudn’t save him from ultimately falling out of the front running.
The hype regarding social networking, web 2.0 and the 2008 election has become almost intollerable. Finally, the time has come to dispell some of this hype. TV avertising isn’t going away. Candidartes can still swew up OFFLINE and 13 year old obama fans DONT translate into votes.
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