Tuesday, February 12, 2008
marketers: ruining all the fun

Do you completely ignore all of your Facebook notifications, and then delete them 25 at a time? You're not alone.

BusinessWeek reports on how marketers are mucking up a good thing by annoying the crap out of you with notifications and applications and stuff that doesn't add to your experience.

While the trend is real - I'm not convinced of the BusinessWeek conclusion - that people are leaving social apps, and finding new things. They point to the decline in MySpace usage as proof. Ummm....decline in MySpace usage?? Yeah, and people don't wear acid washed jeans anymore, either.

Crowds aren't going to continue migrating to the next new thing, just because of ads. Because the ad agencies will follow. When I am finally in control of the world, two things will happen:

1. Social sites will listen to their users, and create tools that make it easier to ignore, delete and remove the annoying crap. Facebook is already making some strides in this area. I predict more in the future. New social apps should have this built in.

2. Marketers will need to create content that has value. For real. And stop force feeding friend notifications and spamming.

So, see you on Facebook. And Seesmic. And Twitter. And Ning. And....

From Wilson Cleveland, via Facebook.

Labels: facebook, myspace, social media, trends, web2.0, youthmarketing

posted by darryl ohrt @ 8:03 AM   2 comments

2 Comments:

At 10:09 AM,  Jared @ The Marketing Diner said...

The challenge with marrying marketing and social media is that it really doesn't work if you're just pushing a product. You have to pushing the personality of the product.

Just like a "friend" request, if you get a lot out of the personality, you'll get a lot out of the overt social media marketing push.  

At 8:32 PM,  Rodrigo van Kampen said...

Here in Brazil orkut is the most popular social site... It unfortunately became a jungle of really bad marketing, even porn marketing disguised as pretty girls profiles, and all kind of crap that just make you sad thinking: "What did they just do to such a nice idea?"
Some invented the microwave... And some the atomic bomb. Same technology, different uses.

Nice post!  

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