This from the only friend I've ever had to block on Facebook - cause he constantly sent out his own promotional crap to his friend list. He knows advertising won't work on Facebook, but he sure believes in spamming his friend list.

Social networking is second only to chat rooms as the worst place to advertise. The content there from your friends and your family is more compelling than any advertisement. Google has the greatest advertising in media history -- search advertising. When you type a word into the box, we know what you're looking for. When you're on Facebook, we know you're looking to meet a girl or talk to your friends. It's a terrible platform for advertising. The holy grail of e-commerce forever has been that people are going to buy something online because their friends did, or that everybody here is into skiing so we're going to sell a bunch of skiing stuff. It hasn't happened. Plus, e-commerce is a low-margin business. It's nowhere near search inventory.

Jason Calacanis at the Graphing Social conference

He's right about Google and search intent. But his spam ju-jitsu shows he also intuitively knows how marketing will eventually work on social networks.

"The content there from your friends and your family is more compelling than any advertisement."

Logically, when the content from your family and friends is the advertising, social network monetization will start to work.

Labels: facebook

¶ 10/12/2007

I was psyched when ESPN got Monday Night Football. I get ESPN in HD, and I thought it would be great.

Of course it sucks.

Basically they've sold out the game to commercialism - primarily cross-promoting ABC shows. The whole thing reeks of an 'event experience.' It's like they chose the producer of the Super Bowl halftime show to produce the whole damn game.

Here are the most annoying aspects:

1. Tony Kornheiser and Mike Tirico can't stop blathering about ANYTHING BUT FOOTBALL.
2. Suzy Kolber and Michele Tafoya. (see above)
3. The player intros where some teammate gives us the nicknames of all the players.
4. Do we need a soundtrack from Kid Rock and J.Lo or Pink or someone for each show.
5. The booth visit from some famous person, usually someone appearing on Dancing with the Stars this season.
6. Chris Berman's halftime act is just tiresome.
7. The lack of replays.
8. Pre-taped interviews / video segments that overrun actual plays.

Overall, I still look forward to the game, but the MNF production emphasizes everything BUT the game.

Labels: football, randomness

¶ 10/08/2007