“I WANT to be enthused about things like Myspace, and Facebook, and Second Life, and iLike…In every case, I feel like people are blindly giving away value, and not getting enough in return. What do you get from these websites that you can’t get on your own? What do they do for you that you can’t do for yourself? The real purpose of all of them seems… to me, to be convincing people to give up personal information so that information can be sold to businesses, or otherwise used to market products. They are SPAM factories.” – Rusty Dubose
Rumor has it that Microsoft is about to purchase 5% of Facebook for $500 million.
Let’s put those numbers against the stats on Wikipedia’s Facebook page:
($500,000 * 20) / 34,000,000 active members = $294.11764 / active member.
No, I don’t think most “active members” get $300 of “free” value out of Facebook, MySpace, or Pownce.
Maybe LinkedIn….more likely Twitter.
The free blog their cousin set up for them on the server in his basement – absolutely.
Hey Garrick,
I’m not sure I agree with your analysis here. At least not in all cases. For an individual user, Myspace has little value. But, my Minneapoliscast Myspace page has probably been the single most valuable bit of marketing I’ve done for the podcast to date. I’m in contact with around 700 MN artists via Myspace and it does drive traffic to the website.
I pooh-poohed Myspace in my last band. But then another band member took it upon himself to set up a band Myspace page and the number of show offers from bands and venues increased immediately. Suddenly over half our booking was through Myspace.
As for the value of the individual user, $300 is overvaluing 95% of the content on Myspace. I think users overvalue their content without wanting to do the work of building value. I.e., good, consistent, interesting writing/art/music.
The only thing that makes the social networking sites so valuable is delivering viewers to advertisers. It’s essentially the same model that newspaper sales are built on.
Tony, thanks, you’ve confirmed my thinking for both individuals and non-individuals (groups, projects, and other ‘ongoing concerns’).