Advertising Placement In Asia And Elsewhere?

Wanting to take online advertising in Asia or elsewhere?  Not sure if social media or online versions of newspapers are your best choice? This interactive chart may give you some pointers.

Simply highlight one of the demographic or maximum impressions buttons and you can judge which platforms or media you will be able to use to best advantage.


All statistics are taken from Google's AdPlanner.

Cutting Your Losses

MySpace has been finally been sold and for the miserly sum of $US35 million. That's a huge loss for News Corporation and according to reports, 50% of current staff will be laid off.

The reason for the site's rapid demise appears ot be due to a combination of "poor management, or a need to hit revenue targets once News Corp. took over, or a bottleneck in the technology department, or lack of resources given to their division, or a poor public relations effort, etc." according to Hypervocal's Lee Brenner.

Entertainer Justin Timberlake who has taken a stake in MySpace believes the platform still has the potential to be the place on the Web where “fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect.”

Related articles

• Justin Timberlake buys ownership stake in MySpace (digitaltrends.com)
• Digital Rupert's bumper $545m loss (go.theregister.com)

There Is No Second

It is a truism that those companies who are first out of the blocks with an innovative idea are often the most successful. While 'first user advantage' doesn't last for long, it does set the pace for others to try and follow.

This is equally true in the wonderful world of social media. Those who come to the table late are left with the crumbs.

Witness AOL's purchase of Bebo for $US850 million . They dropped it from their company portfiolio this past summer for under $10 million.

Rick Aristotle Munarriz of the Motley Fool says that:

"MySpace is trying to do what Friendster, Tribe.net, Bebo, and any social network that squandered its 15 minutes has failed to do."

"I guess MySpace missed the memo. You only get one shot to matter in Web 2.0, and its time came and went. News Corp. should have either cashed out of MySpace when it was hot -- or at the very least, peaking. We're living in Facebook's world now, until that site somehow stumbles."

or one could take the Microsoft route and try to buy the most world's successful social media platform.

David Kirkpatrick stated in his book “The Facebook Effect” that Microsoft made an offer of $15 billion for Facebook:

"Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had flown to Palo Alto to visit his young counterpart twice. As Zuckerberg is wont to do, he took Ballmer on a long walk. Zuckerberg told Ballmer that Facebook was raising money at a $15 billion valuation. But Ballmer had come with something more sweeping in mind. “Why don’t we just buy you for $15 billion?” he replied, according to a very knowledgeable source. Zuckerberg was unmoved even by this offer. “I don’t want to sell the company unless I can keep control,” said Zuckerberg, as he always did in such situations.

Ballmer took this reply as a sort of challenge. He went back to Microsoft’s headquarters and concocted a plan intended to acquire Facebook in stages over a period of years to enable Zuckerberg to keep calling the shots. But Zuckerberg rejected all the overtures. What Ballmer finally agreed to instead was an advertising deal that included a provision for Microsoft to pay a huge amount, $240 million, for a sliver of Facebook, 1.6%. Microsoft’s investment gave Facebook an implied value of $15 billion.”

Microsoft's Senior Director of Corporate Strategy and Acquisitions Fritz Lanman  has since confirmed that this offer took place

Quite apart from acquisitions, companies are beginning to realise that social medai responsibility needs to be embedded within an organisation and not reside soley in the hands of a few specialist staff.

The New York Times for example have just eliminated it post of social media editor in an acknowledgement that such activity is a shared responsibility.

“Social media can’t belong to one person; it needs to be part of everyone’s job. It has to be integrated into the existing editorial process and production process. I’m convinced that’s the only way we’re going to crack the engagement nut.” says New York Times Social Media Editor Jennifer Preston.

Related articles

• Microsoft: Zuckerberg Nixed $15 Billion Buyout Bid (cbsnews.com)
• Zuckerberg pledges to donate most of his wealth to charity (newstatesman.com)

So Who Will Dethrone Facebook?

Who are the pretenders to the Facebook throne?

It seems a strange question to ask when Facebook is at the top of its game, but the same used to be said for MySpace and look where it is heading.

As this chart shows, Mr Murdoch's investment is still on the slippery slope to social oblivion.

Ning is one of the more popular alternative platforms but even it has struggled to be a commercial success and has from July will embrace a different business model; the free version disappearing in a puff of smoke.

This has seen the use of Ning go into decline, dropping nearly 5% since the intial announcement, as site owners scramble for alternatives (chart below)

So who might take over?  Here are some of the platforms that are being touted by the pundits.

OneSocialWeb has the backing of Vodaphone and their vision is a series of interconnected platforms thereby creating a bigger social web.



The Appleseed project aimes to " create an open source, fully distributed and decentralized social networking software"

And then of course there is the next Big Thing from Google............?

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