Social: The New Dot Com Bubble?

[Clinton]

Big new fund starting up to finance social web projects. It's called sFund.

Details were announced at an event at Facebook's California headquarters.
"There's going to be an opportunity over the next five years or so to pick any industry and rethink it in a social way," said Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.
"We think that every industry is going to be fundamentally re-thought and designed around people."

Every industry?! Give me a break?

What do you think? We've been hearing about Web 2.0 since forever. The big gorillas in Web 2.0 are still struggling to make money and their best chance of generating Microsoft Office type of revenues is via misuse of their databases and privacy settings.

Many companies that initially salivated at the prospects of using tools like Twitter to increase their dominance of the market are now reevaluating their social investments and discovering that these are better for market research and customer relations than as sales tools....which is a game changing light bulb moment.

Is this a new bubble forming or do you believe social is the Next Big Thing?

[mgallone]

To be fair, its difficult to argue that social networking hasn't significantly altered the way many people use the internet, for both work and leisure. It isn't unfeasible to expect continued growth and some kind of incorporation with cloud computing- what with Google essentialy developing an online toolbox of software, plus, if rumours are to be believed, their own social networking platform. I'd imagine that the significant change for most industries will come from the increased appeal of outsourcing or working from home, it enables group work to be done at a fast pace and with easy communication channels.

[Clinton]

I agree, it has changed the way people use the internet. That there haven't emerged the most brilliant models to convert that change into commercial profit may just be because the industry is still in its infancy.

Cloud computing appeals to corporates on various levels - it gives them access to more powerful tools at lower cost and makes humungous savings in rent and office overheads by harnessing teleworking.

Where do you see the big money emerging in the social web?

[mgallone]

With 500 million + users, I would assume that once the ad system matures a bit more, facebook and the like will make money much in the same way as Google. However, there is also the possibility of microtransactions for small upgardes or services. This is something that I'm not aware of any site doing at the moment, but with the continued rise of apps and games, there must be an opportunity to see some fairly significant revenue from that source alone.

[tke71709]

With 500 million + users, I would assume that once the ad system matures a bit more, facebook and the like will make money much in the same way as Google.

If by "much in the same way as Google" you mean advertising then sure, but Google (and SEs in general) are a special case, they actually tailor ads to things that people are actively looking for at the same exact time that the ad is displayed. Social networks can do this to a certain extent but there advantage is that they know about the user (male/female, age, income, hobbies, etc...) to tailor general ads to them.

So in the hierarchy of earning from ads from a large ad server perspective...

1) SEs - tailor to intent at the moment
2) Social networks - good for branding ads, general demographically triggered ads
3) General PPV networks - some tailoring based on site type but that is all they know

[Clinton]

Incidentally, over the last couple of days there's been a rush on sfund domains with the .info, .co.uk etc., all being snapped up by third parties

[grynge]

Probably a little off the subject but I LOVE SOCIAL MEDIA. I have found it to be a great way of getting your competition to waste valuable time and money. Whenever I am at a trade show, I always talk up how much we are making from blogs/twitter/facebook. As most of you know that unless you are one of the top 1% in those mediums you are likely to make very little and even damage your companies reputation if done wrong. The more I talk them up the more people listen and these guys are the guys who then go to their staff "this guy is making a killing why aren't we into blogs/twitter/facebook get us into it." Because in our home town we were one of the only companies to expand last year they tend to think it must be the way we are doing it.

[hooperman]

Probably a little off the subject but I LOVE SOCIAL MEDIA. I have found it to be a great way of getting your competition to waste valuable time and money.

LOL. Cheeky.

I haven't got a clue about social media and am doing fine without it. Every now and then I wonder whether my efforts would be more successful if I did use it but my suspicions are that they wouldn't, and I can't be bothered learning how to use facebook/twitter etc properly.