Friday, August 27, 2010

Old Spice, Facebook and Web 3.0

As we all approach whatever it is that’s called Web 3.0, one thing is for sure and that’s the fact that everything is still changing at breakneck speed on the Internet. That includes the Web’s new favorite child in social media.

Places like Facebook and Twitter are becoming more and more popular not only to build communities but to advertise as well, and it seems like it might be the right time for Facebook at least to start looking to make some kind of move.

A recent article I read says that the social media platform is starting to loose much of its teenage audience. According to statistics, Facebook only gained 330,000 new members in June. Now while that might seem like a lot, you need to look at the facts that it really isn’t. For example, FB logged 7.8 million new users in May.

So, it stands to reason that people wanted to understand why there was such a dramatic dip and why. What they found might be a little troubling for the social media building block. It seems that apart from the usual teenage restlessness that always has them  looking for something new, there’s A Facebook Fatigue setting where people are starting to question why they invested so might time on the site in the first place.

Sure, the sagging numbers could also be the result of some bad media attention they’ve received over their privacy policies, but that should go away. Just ask Bill Clinton how forgiving people can be and how quickly they forget what the press turns up.

Still , there might be a bigger question here for social media in general and Facebook particularly and it centers around what’s certain to be around some big changes that are on the way with Web 3.0 , social media and advertising.

Here’s a case in point that the good people at Facebook could use to detract their naysayers. More and more , business is looking toward social media as a  way to reach a demographic that’s Web Savvy. So brands like Old Spice have turned to Facebook Twitter and YouTube to engage their consumer base using the likes of an interaction with former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa.

The result? They might be sagging with their initial base of followers in the teenagers, but  business looks like it still has enough confidence in the platform to use it to enagage a different demographic. It’s also possible that marketing people have missed the boat entirely and don’t understand yet the social media fires seem to be cooling.

More than likely, what will happen is that a new buzz will be created and social media platforms like Facebook will find a new or different life as a kind of interactive electronic classifies for big business and their big brands.

Of course people will be left wondering where that leaves the people that broke the ground for social media, those grassroots users that are behind a slight decline in new memberships.

They’ll still have their place because the chances of anything really drastic happening to social media just because something called Web 3.0 is approaching are slim. They will just be more of it to sort through.

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