When searching for the number of political supporters registered on Facebook fanpages I discovered that the Bavarian party CSU had a fanpage with just nine fans (FDP, Grünen and SPD have more than 1000 fans). More embarrassing: the competitor SPD is advertising on Facebook and the ad is displayed even if the search term is “CSU”.

However, it seems to be random. I could not replicate the “anomaly”.

Sharp tongues say that “Web 2.0 means selling people their own content via advertising”. This does not work, of course:

The shortage of revenue among social networks, blogs and other “social media” sites that put user-generated content and communications at their core has persisted despite more than four years of experimentation aimed at turning such sites into money-makers. Together with the US economic downturn and a shortage of initial public offerings, the failure has damped the mood in internet start-up circles.

Read the full article: FT.com / Companies / Media & internet – Web 2.0 fails to produce cash

Great posting:

The idea that software on the Web is going to be largely funded by advertising is just so wrong-headed, I hardly know where to start. It had me spluttering in the latest BriefingsDirect Insights analyst podcast hosted by Dana Gardner — more on that in a moment. Let’s move on from 1.0 notions of the Web as just a publishing medium, with ads on the side. Doc Searls already pronounced what I consider to be advertising’s epitaph way back in March 2006: “Why build an economy around Attention, when Intention is where the money comes from?”

Read on: Web 2.0 and the end of advertising | Software as Services | ZDNet.com

• Marc Samwer (European Funders Fund; Facebook Investor):
  • Germany lags behind France or England concerning the number of apps and app developers
• Matt Cohler (VP product management of Facebook) and Javier Olivan (Product Management)
  • 66% international users
  • new languages launch today: Italian, Norwegian, Dutch, Polish
  • German App Contest
  • no statements to Facebooks strategy …
• Steve Rubel (Edelmann)
  • Mass reach is dead.
  • It’s all about micro-collaboration.
  • Advertising in social networks will not work in the long term.
  • The future of economics is wikinomics – four principle should guide your business:
    • Openness – don’t control everything, open it for others
    • Peering – connect with people
    • Sharing – share your information with your peers
    • Acting globally
  • The future of public relations is social networking and corporate blogging
  • “Social networks become a feature of the web.” – every website will have a social network and your social network is everywhere
• Aka-aki presented the future of social networking: lomososo – location-based mobile social networking; your handy locates your friend mates and network peers via Bluetooth within 20 metres!
• Interview with Javier Olivan:
  • Facebook is available in 8 languages
  • In the future there will be hundreds of languages thanks to the Facebook translation app
  • To enter foreign markets Facebook rely on local developers
  • They know the market best
  • The strategy for the German market was/will be:
    • Translation
    • Garage
    • Contest
    • More Garages will take place in Germany (likely in October in Berlin)
  • Facebook is a communication platform
    • with privacy control
    • for information sharing
  • To differentiate between private and business contacts German users should use the friends list feature
  • Facebook is watching OpenSocial, but they are not supporting it yet, because it is in working progress
  • Facebook F8 integrates external apps into Facebook
  • Facebook Connect lets the Facebook data integrate into external websites
  • “We are part of the Internet factory”
  • Facebook philosophy is “creating more value than we can capture”.

Bad news for the Web 2.0 industry:

PubMatic, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup focused on online advertising, just released its PubMatic AdPrice Index based on data from over 3,000 publishers and billions of ad impressions. The findings of this month’s report: The U.S. economic slowdown is beginning to impact online advertising in a big way, with overall monetization dropping by 23 percent — 38 cents eCPM in March vs. 49 cents eCPM in March. [...] Again, no surprise that Social Networking led the plunge, with monetization dropping 47 percent to 19 cents in April from 37 cents in March, below January lows of 22 cents.

Read the full article: Metrics: Trouble in Online Adland – GigaOM

My monthly column (in German):

Die Social Networks sind auf Talfahrt. MySpace, Facebook & Co. verlieren Zeit: die Zeit, die ihre Nutzer durchschnittlich auf ihren Seiten verbringen. Immerhin, die Nutzerzahlen steigen noch, aber auch längst nicht mehr so steil wie zu den Hochzeiten. Die sind endgültig vorbei. Das Neue ist verblasst, die Trendsetter ziehen weiter zum nächsten Hype und hinterlassen in manchen Social Networks eine gähnende Leere.

Read the full article.

A 32 year old MySpace user said this about the ads on his favourite social network. He is not alone according to BusinessWeek and also MySpace is not the only social network whose growth is slowing and whose users are spending in average less time on their networks. The slowing in growth was to be expected, because there are already a lot of people who have an account at MySpace, Facebook & Co.

The decrease in user time and in click rates, however, is critical to the business model of most social networks, which is based mainly on advertising. The reasons for the decrease are:

• The laggards spend in average less time on social networks and so the overall average time decreases.
• The early adopter, which spend a lot of time with MySpace, Facebook & Co. are probably leaving as these networks become mainstream.
• The user are annoyed by the ads and so are moving to new sites, which don’t place ads on their pages, yet.
• The attention of the users stays the same, but the number of ads per user increases and so the average click decreases.

If the incomes from advertising decreases in the nearby future, companies will seek for alternatives, like Facebook, which sold in ten month 24 million virtual gifts (costs: 1 $ per gift). That’s why paid content is back.

Nevertheless, have a good time with your social network – online and offline.