February 13, 2008

2012 Came Early This year

On October 23, 2007, TAC wrote an entry called "Baloney Sandwich." It said:
...Second was this piece of baloney from CNET:

"A report by U.K.-based Datamonitor, titled 'The Future of Social Networking: Understanding Market Strategic and Technological Developments' predicts that growth in the number of people signing up to be a part of the cultural phenomenon, which has put the likes of Facebook on the map, will peak by 2009 and plateau by 2012."

Really? Wanna bet? These guys know as much about what's going to happen to Facebook in five years as...about what stocks we're going to buy tomorrow.

Well, I love to be the one to say I told you so, so here's a little excerpt from this week's Business Week. It's from a piece called "Generation MySpace Is Getting Fed Up"

Uh-oh. Social networking was supposed to be the Next Big Thing on the Internet. MySpace, Facebook, and other sites have been attracting millions of new users, building sprawling sites that companies are banking on to trigger an online advertising boom. Trouble is, the boom isn't booming anymore...many people are spending less time on social networking sites or signing off altogether.

The MySpace generation may be getting annoyed with ads and a bit bored with profile pages. The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months, according to market researcher ComScore..."What you have with social networks is the most overhyped scenario in online advertising," says Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media...

And clueless "researchers", as usual, dressing up bullshit to look like facts.

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