They still don't get it
03/14/10 03:11 PM Filed in: Business of
marketing
According to the
article:
According to Compete.com, Facebook recently became the top source of traffic to major sites such as Yahoo and MSN, surpassing Google. Hitwise said that Facebook is the fourth leading traffic driver to news sites.
Nielsen reported that in January, U.S. consumers spent a staggering seven hours a month on Facebook -- more than three and a half times the time spent on Yahoo, which ranked second in attention.
Finally, while still tiny compared to Google, search queries on Facebook climbed 13% in January, according to ComScore.
While all this is of course true it means little in a world where fickle consumers are quick to change loyalty to brands & websites. Consider the backlash against Facebook when they have tried to change user interfaces. The message was clear "users want they want and if you mess with what we want we'll drop you like a bad habit".
A quick look at the dot coms who were once really big and the toast of the town shows that the Internet is evolving and as it evolves consumers tastes are changing. I, for one, believe that eventually a LOT of people are going to grow tired of being connected 24/7/365, especially when their Tweets and posts have locations with them. Consumer behavior tends to come full circle and eventually people are going to realize that talking with someone face to face is more important and satisfying than texting them.
I also have to laugh at the people who believe "mobile marketing is ready to explode". Yes more and more people are using smartphones but in order for the mobile web to really take off mobile Internet connections are going to need to increase their speeds dramatically. I have an high speed Internet connection at home and when I use my iPhone to Tweet or surf the web it feels like I'm going back to the days of dial-up.
One more thing on Facebook: very few brands are getting a good ROI from a Facebook page and in fact research indicates that most people friend a brand to get discounts. Edelman's articles are self-serving because they want to sell marketers tools for monitoring social media. In the meantime I'd be willing to bet that in 10 years Facebook is not as hot as it is today.
According to Compete.com, Facebook recently became the top source of traffic to major sites such as Yahoo and MSN, surpassing Google. Hitwise said that Facebook is the fourth leading traffic driver to news sites.
Nielsen reported that in January, U.S. consumers spent a staggering seven hours a month on Facebook -- more than three and a half times the time spent on Yahoo, which ranked second in attention.
Finally, while still tiny compared to Google, search queries on Facebook climbed 13% in January, according to ComScore.
While all this is of course true it means little in a world where fickle consumers are quick to change loyalty to brands & websites. Consider the backlash against Facebook when they have tried to change user interfaces. The message was clear "users want they want and if you mess with what we want we'll drop you like a bad habit".
A quick look at the dot coms who were once really big and the toast of the town shows that the Internet is evolving and as it evolves consumers tastes are changing. I, for one, believe that eventually a LOT of people are going to grow tired of being connected 24/7/365, especially when their Tweets and posts have locations with them. Consumer behavior tends to come full circle and eventually people are going to realize that talking with someone face to face is more important and satisfying than texting them.
I also have to laugh at the people who believe "mobile marketing is ready to explode". Yes more and more people are using smartphones but in order for the mobile web to really take off mobile Internet connections are going to need to increase their speeds dramatically. I have an high speed Internet connection at home and when I use my iPhone to Tweet or surf the web it feels like I'm going back to the days of dial-up.
One more thing on Facebook: very few brands are getting a good ROI from a Facebook page and in fact research indicates that most people friend a brand to get discounts. Edelman's articles are self-serving because they want to sell marketers tools for monitoring social media. In the meantime I'd be willing to bet that in 10 years Facebook is not as hot as it is today.
