Is Web 2.0 becoming Bubble 2.0; Social Networking becoming Social Notworking?
By Shael Sharma on Feb 29, 2008 in Mobile Marketing, advertise, blogosphere, communication, corporateblogging, featured, industry news, media, mediarelations, twitter
After doing battle with scaremongering for the last couple of posts, here’s me wimping out and spinning my own doomsday special for you. Unusually I have had more than enough sleep so this is not sleep deprivation either. The media is awash with the Union Budget news and I don’t seem to agree with anything that is being sold by various economists, interest groups, lobbyists and politicians. As is won’t, this promises to be an election budget with populist measures that will whittle away tax payers money (yes this usually represents a third of your income on the pay slip!) in rubbish schemes but nothing can make me unhappy today. I am surprisingly happy considering the fact that there is really no good news!
So to the topic of my post: Is Web 2.0 becoming Bubble 2.0 and Social Networking becoming Social Notworking (sic)? If you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve probably seen the internet bubble of 2000 and its crazy outlandish pony tail visage. Funny part is, nothing was too freak or outlandish to pitch for a business plan if it included a website in it. The market was awash with venture capital dollars and run rate or burn rate were common place terms in those circles. Not much survived that era and the remnants of this internet bubble largesse did not last.
When Google bought a loss making YouTube for USD 1.65 Billion, followed by the crazy valuations at facebook.com and myspace.com, and a seemingly crazier bid of USD 47 Billion by Microsoft for Yahoo, I knew that Free is Back! Recently AOL decided to offer free e-mail, with many free goodies including XM Radio, Anti Virus, 5 Gig online storage, etc, etc. Incidentally the poor cousin Indian version of AOL does not offer these!
There is more bad news on the horizon as Google stock fell 38 per cent on a report by comscore that AD clicks on Google had been flat in the month of January as compared to last year. This was widely reported across the world and created tremors that were felt far away from its epicentre.
Facebook has recently retreated on its aggressive advertising venture known as the Beacon after howls of protest from its subscribers, numbers which incidentally for the first time started to plateau. Google similarly is showing signs of a slow down. All this coupled with the strong privacy issues that have plagued all large players in the social networking are really a cause for worry where the future of the web 2.0 is concerned.
The benefits that it has bought to the enterprise business in terms of collaboration tools like blogs, widgets, twitters and IM as a result of user generated content can not be ignored but at the same time the impact of social networking has been minimal besides online advertising. This is even more pronounced in India due our insulation from the west both in terms of cultural differences and internet infrastructure bottlenecks across 3G spectrum as well as simple broadband. What it can do is hopelessly mix up your personal and professional life and inadvertently give access to people about your personal information, which you’d much rather keep to yourself and your social ilk.
The other is the time spent wasting company resources while on the job doing what is popularly being referred to as social NOTworking! This is a real concern as, while many managements have draconian solutions but it is important for all CIOs and CTOs to consider how much of the technology and infrastructure that they provide is actual used by employees, and how much is in the nature of freeware which certainly brings a lot of productivity to the enterprise including web based e-mail, instant messaging services as well as social networking tools.
Back into the PR paddock in India, I would love to hear from PR Firms who actually have a social media list they actively use, and dedicated resources who are real practitioners, with real customers without getting my bullshit meter in the red.
If you are bleeding from the budget take hope and have a great weekend!
Popularity: 21% [?]
On Feb 29, 2008, Aren Grimshaw said:
I read your post with genuine interest and believe you very succinctly showed the parallels between the lead up to the dot.com crash and the expectations surrounding web 2.0.
I have dugg your article and will look to follow up on this through my own blog on the subject appropriately referencing yours.
Many thanks,
Aren Grimshaw.
http://uknetweb.wordpress.com
On Mar 3, 2008, Shael Sharma said:
Thanks Aren, look forward to your post, do send a link.
Shael
On Mar 18, 2008, An De Jonghe said:
Dear Shael,
Good article of which the premise is correct: yes there are too many SN out there today and yes many will disappear in the following two years. However, I believe the best SN (the ones that will last) will be those who are able to transform themselves into tools that are directly useful to companies.
An
author of “Social Networks Around The World: How is Web 2.0 Changing Your Daily Life?”
On Mar 19, 2008, Shael Sharma said:
Hi An,
Thanks for your comments and yes you are right and maybe we are still in the dark ages and waiting for a renaissance to happen. Till it does, the path to success is trodden with stones!
On Apr 27, 2008, Ela Gaur said:
Good article on the aspect of the booming Social Networking portal at present.
The survival of all the existing and upcoming portal is not a realty, the bigger one high on the popularity chart and liked by the target audience will survive the Dot com brust, Based on the Principle of “Survival of Fittest” – Darvin theory of Natural Selection.
This theory has wide applicability for booming business.
On Apr 27, 2008, Ashu said:
True fact all the Social Networking website will not survive.
The survival will depend on various factors like:
- Features Provided to the Target Audience.
- Reach of the portal.
- Ability to lur and distinguish your offering as compared to other.
Each concept has its own base of Growth i.e. known as Product/ concept life cycle starting slowly initially, spreading and later on saturate or had a static phase.Depending on the competitive forces the life cycle of concept can be widen, but no concept can live forever.
To widen the life time of the concept the thinking and constant improvement and betterment is utmost desired.
Ashu Gaur
http://www.eilix.com
On May 15, 2008, Shelly Begarowicz said:
You talk about folks wasting time at work on “social NOT-working” but I wonder this new crop of social networks will be viewed. And if they could possibly be a good way to reach out and connect with like minded folks?
I’m talking about those that tailor themselves to the “work at home” internet marketers like Wowzza (not affiliated).
Could there be a day when folks will be hired just to “NOT-work” for their company? Does this already happen?
ShellyB
http://www.Network-Marketing-News.com
On May 15, 2008, Ashu Gaur said:
The view point that social networking website can be source of information and creating the network of friends..
This can be effectively and more productively done by the use of the Professional Networking portal where in you can more easily connect to the like minded folks.
On Jul 18, 2009, TIP Guy said:
SNs have not yet shown its ability to sustain on its own. So far, there is not a single SN company/site that has been able to demostrate a business model. Yes, even Facebook has not yet at break even level.
My point is all this buzz about its capabilty to network, productivity, trageting groups, etc, etc, are good. But who will keep feeding this gorilla.
And since when did concept of networking start working in India?
The barrier to entry in SN domain is so low, that probability of sustainable success is very low.
On Jul 21, 2009, Shael Sharma said:
The concpet of networking is quite switched on in India and it promises to be huge…there are arguments for both sides…but clearly, this is a business that feeds stomachs and ego’s-I am sure it will do very well!