US money burning, Copyright Filip Fuxa
I just want to warn all my friends and family that this social networking company is the biggest ponzi scheme since AOL and Netscape crashed, hey maybe since the South Sea bubble.
At least if you get stuck with a tulip, you can eat it.
So a few things have been happening these past few days, and I’ve been busy. Then I hear Facebook has it’s IPO for a few billion. Now, I know that Yahoo initially made a few young billionaires (and yes, then we learned it was overpriced) and Google did Okay (and they were smart enough to buy up Youtube.) But Facebook is a fad. And there’s a difference between a few billion and a hundred billion.
Don’t get me wrong, Google is also in trouble. The quality of its search in places has been dropping, and Microsoft’s Bing is the default on many public computers now (meaning kids are learning to use Bing before Google.) And the way Google promotes Youtube (at the expense of other video services it indexes) might put it into trouble with some competition authorities.
But Google has cornered a lot of the advertising market. It does still have a chance. It has many services that its competitors seem unwilling to offer.
Facebook, on the other hand, has no real security. I think that the twelve year olds who sign up have the right idea, don’t give Facebook your real date of birth. I’d suggest you give them a false month and day of the month too.
Facebook has a little advertising, and I find that it isn’t at all targeted to my interests. I think Facebook is about the only webpage I’ve used where I have never seen an advertisement that I wanted to click on.
I’ve tried advertising with both Facebook and Google Ad Words in the past (my bids were too low, so I didn’t end up paying anything. I didn’t get any traffic out of it either.) I found Google’s way of choosing adverts to be much more intuitive. When people are searching for something, the right keyword pops up. With Facebook, your ads come up compared to what groups someone is a member of, or what their declared “interests” are. There are a few other ways it works, but it’s about as intelligent as a dead jellyfish.
While I’m unlikely to pay to advertise with either company in the near future, of the two, I’d recommend using Google Ads to my clients.
Will the economy see an increase in spending in online advertising? Maybe. Advertising on Youtube looks like a fantastic option, as well as using Youtube’s distant rivals Daily Motion and Vimeo. Youtube is addictive, and it is slowly offering more networking options.
Vimeo is also excellent for the artistic community, and Daily Motion seems to target more of the thinking crowd. Each has its own personality, and best of all, unlike with Facebook, the ads are targeted.
In the future, I see some of these (and similar) video networks replacing Facebook. They could add gaming features, eventually, and integrate into a few MMOs like the Sims and Worlds of Warcraft.
Photo companies are good too. But Facebook’s recent purchase of a no name photo company, with money it didn’t really have, was ridiculous. I mean, it made AOL’s purchase of Time-Warner look normal.
All my Facebook connections are invited to connect with me on LinkedIn, or to continue to communicate by email. If you don’t get the invitation, my linked in page is http://www.linkedin.com/in/vascodesousa .
Well, I’m destroying my Facebook account today, as a protest against how overpriced that lousy piece of trash has become. Come on, at least a tulip you can eat.
Picture credits:
© Filip Fuxa | Dreamstime.com
