Kaiyzen Group

Businessweek has a story about users getting fed up with all of the ads on the social networks and their usage is starting to decline.

I am kind of on the fence regarding this topic…,

In one regard I completely agree with the writers.  The ads are annoying and for the most part completely useless.

In other ways…, the writers are complete idiots.., well.., maybe not complete.., but way off basis in their argument.

They use a testimony from a 27 year old named Chris Heritage who signed up a year ago on facebook b/c his friends bullied him into.  He became annoyed with the ads and decided to stop using the site.

I think people.., especially those in the press and blogosphere need to be a little realistic here with online usage of these sites in regards to the age of the users.  I would love to see some registered user, traffic, session time, etc stats for fbook and myspace broken out by age and region.  For the younger audience.., probably generating 80% of the total page views on these sites.., these sites are fun, catchy, handy, and a great way to kill time.

For the older audience(s).., myself included (i am 29).., the sites are a cool way to keep tabs/contact with those friends that you dont see often, or reconnect with long lost friends from grammar school, etc.  Except for when I get alert emails.., I maybe check out my accounts once a week or so, hop on for about 10 minutes.., hop off.

The obvious truth is that as people mature, grow up.., finish school, start jobs, families, etc there is a limited amount of free time.  The internet is becoming increasingly efficient at sucking up peoples free time these days.., but when I have 1000 things to do this week, outside of doing some reading on the web, some books here and there, checkin the fantasy team.., in dont want to spend more time on the computer seeing who poked who, that sally zombie bit jimmy, etc.  I dont want you to f$%in buy me a virtual drink.., but me a real drink dammit.

The media always needs to make a big deal of everything.., thats their job, but the more I have been following diferent sectors the past few years the more I realize how much bullshit spews from there mouths/keyboards.

Last year it was “social networks are great.., the future.., insane growth, the coolest things eeeeeeever”.., this year we will hear more about “privacy issues, targeted marketing, wayning usage, etc”.

Increased ad spending in the social space is a great thing.  Just like the early days of display ads, then paid search, and every other form of new advertising online has to go through its growing pains.  That being said.., the social networks are also going to be trying to find any way to squeeze that extra couple cents out of their users and are experimenting in various ways.

I think we are probably still 18+ months away from really seeing some of these pie in the sky ambitions coming to fruition.  I am still calling bullshit on fbooks evaluation with the microsoft investment and cant wait to seem them scrambling this year to rabbits out of their ass.., uh.., I mean hat.  We are already seeing that with some of the mobile deals they are getting into.

More on this as writers push my rage button with their worthless, completely off base opinions.

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