Make Marketing History

The views of a marketing deviant.

Friday, July 07, 2006

There's Nothing Happening Here.

Robert Scoble infuriates me endlessly, but I wholeheartedly agree with him about social networks. In practice, they are just irritating and in commercial terms I've already expressed my doubts about them here. Relationships (of whatever nature) take significant investment, whereas connections facilitated by social networks don't.

Moreover, the excitement generated by a massive collection of eyeballs seems to run counter to everything we know about the way things are going. If it weren't for mechanical failures I'd be here discussing the long tail, rather than writing this. So, I was delighted to read this sceptical account of eBay's plan to monetise another type of network. The list (that appears in the comments) of companies that have failed to monetise a huge audience is music to my ears.

2 Comments:

Blogger ann michael said...

Bummer, John! That Geekdinner looked fascinating. How often do they do that - I'll have to see if there's another the next time I'm in London!

4:10 PM, July 07, 2006  
Blogger john dodds said...

Apparently it was oversubscribed and ended up being outdoors and thus not the perfect setting for a talk. Geek dinners over here are quite frequent though not regular. I havent been to one for months.

6:51 AM, July 09, 2006  

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