New Buzz Measurement Tool

Really nice little tool from facebook mimics Google trends. However the facebook one analyses comments and wall posts across the entire facebook platform.

Shows the command facebook have over their data. If they are able to develop this further we will be starting to see targeting of their ads getting tighter and tighter.

Already we expect to be able to target web users based on the interests they have implicitly shown by visiting particular categories of sites. Soon I'm sure a network will find a way to link information with sites like facebook.

It isn't far way at all as Drive are already offering a combination of targeting through linking their network inventory with your messenger \ msn profile. This is a very effective development as the infomration contained within the msn profiles has been shown to be quite true.

Yahoo's purchase of Blue Lithium means that they will probably find a way to copy Drive and implement the same kind of targeting based on Yahoo profiles.

Imagine what would be possible if one of the social networking sites went out and bought a network - facebook's user data being exploited across the internet!

I think once the general public know the extent of the data we use, there will be a small outcry. Although debates are being had about the ways in which we use personal data, it does seem to have gotten to silly levels.

Myspace is getting desparate

Logged onto Myspace for the first time in a while just now and saw this interstitial. Hope it's going to go OK - Courtney's just about to leave to see what she can do for these guys. I think they're starting to realise they need to up their game slightly.
I'm surprised that Myspace still don't seem to have taken the time to make customising people's profiles easier. You'd have thought that this could be a winner over facebook, if the customisation was straightforward (and nice looking!).
We'll see how they manage. July's numbers should be out soon and I suspect we'll see facebook really starting to eat into them in the UK.

Spotplex - Next Big Thing?

Really interesting site I just found out about from the regularly excellent Data Mining blog.

This site has the potential to give us some numbers on the 'blogosphere.'
At the moment, the only effective measurement on blogs is through Technorati and Nielsen's Buzzmetrics. Spotplex is offering the ability to measure actual readers (or at least page impressions).

It'll be interesting to see how well this service does. It has the potential to compete with both digg and google analytics. While it is doing this, it will enable us good ol' advertisers to work out how many people are reading these blog things, and give us some fantastic graphs to show what people are actually looking at.

Can't wait till this gets integrated with Swivel!

Religous Social Networking

As a rule, some things are not going to sound cool. The advertising industry faces this problem on a regular basis. How do you make toilet paper cool? How do you make people care enough about which toilet paper they're going to use?

Luckily, a new Jewish social network has solved this problem. If you use a the word 'Kool' in the name of your site.

Honestly - I thought mis-spelling cool fell out of trendiness in the eighties.

Also, social networking should be about connecting with your own friends, and then gradually expanding it out. Limiting yourself to a particular group of people is rather closed minded, and indicates that you're only able to make friends with people who are extremely similar to yourself.

This isn't the only religous one, someone's setup MyChurch.org and also muslimspace.com.

The problem with social networking sites is that they are very cheap to setup the technology, the difficulty is in getting people to use them. Leveraging existing communities looks like a good idea. However, it has to be done very well.

Myspace succeeded by lassooing the trendy kids - music + teenagers + customisation. Facebook managed it by being exclusive and playing up to kids who'd just joined university. Piczo grew around the idea of sharing photos. Not sure what Bebo did, but I'm sure it didn't grow by associating itself with religon.

Religon is all very well and good for attracting people of a certain age. The question that has to be asked: is religon really an effective marketing tool for people under 25? I think the lack of 'Jesus Cola' shows that it is. In fact, the only religous brand I can think of is 'Quaker,' which I think has slowly died since Nestle bought them about ten years ago.


PS. I'm sure Jesus Cola actually exists, but it's definitely not of a size to register against the Cola giants.