George Parker: Come and Get Your Social Networks… Free, For a Limited Time Only!

As I write this on a Sunday afternoon, after a splendid lunch accompanied by a bottle of rather fine claret, I am relaxing with my essential Sunday New York Times. Which, now that I live in Boise, Idaho, I don’t get ‘till late afternoon, as it has to be flown in from Seattle, then delivered by a family of local drug addicts, who sometimes have a problem getting out of bed in the morning.

But, that’s of little consequence to the main thrust of this week’s diatribe. After finally getting my mitts on the New York Times, I first read the news of the week section, most of which I will read days later in the local newspaper. I then proceed to the business section. Because in spite of the rapidly declining rate of whatever pathetic amounts of money I still have left in the stock market, or the savings scam du jour is… The news in the business section is invariably cheery and upbeat. Probably because it’s written by the same grinning fucktards who appear daily on CNBC telling me that even though the Dow Jones is down by a million points, not to worry… This now represents a once in a lifetime, buying opportunity!” What they conveniently forget, is that you can’t buy anything if you have no dosh left.

Anyway, here I am reading Brad Stone’s column, and I think hello! This guy must have been cloned from me, ‘cos he seems to share my bemusement about how ninety nine percent of the incredibly hyped social network scams out there are ever going to make a dime. Because as he points out, just this last week, Facebook, in a loud and proud public announcement, said it didn’t care whether its members visited Facebook.com at all. In the incredibly stupid words of Facebook’s Ethan Beard, “We believe we are giving people a better way to share more information in more places, and we actually expect it will allow Facebook to grow significantly.” Sorry, Ethan, even though you are growing like the fucking Blob in Steve McQueen’s movie debut, and you now have millions of users, you aren’t making any money. So if you don’t give a fuck whether or not anyone shows up in the future, how does that grow Facebook? And of course, Twitter is on the same kick, because from day one they’ve let third parties create programs that allow people to see and post Twitter updates without any revenue to the company. Yeah, I know you’re all going to tell me I’m an old fart who doesn’t get it… But all of this is starting to sound very much like the end of the nineties, when a zillion dot coms were talking shit about how it was about building an audience, then worrying about making money later… And, in case you’ve forgotten, for ninety five percent of those well funded start ups… There was no tomorrow. Many millions of dollars went down the black hole of the next big thing. Check this space in a couple of years. I’m sure by then there will be another next big thing I can get pissed off about. ‘Cos I aint going away!

George Parker is the perpetrator of adscam.typepad.com, without doubt, one of the most foul and annoying, piss & vinegar ad blogs on the planet. His new book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders, has just been published by Amazon and is currently setting the ether ablaze. He will continue to relentlessly promote the crap out of it until you are forced to stab yourself in the eyes with knitting needles.