There’s been a hell of a lot of chat recently about exactly how you can make money through social media. So far, the only ones cashing in have been the founding principals when they sell off a fraction of their site to a traditional media company, which immediately gives them an insane valuation in the billions. Right now the situation smacks of the late nineties, dot com “Field of dreams” model. The one that said if you build it they will come, then we’ll start making dumpster loads of money by selling lots and lots of really shitty and intrusive advertising on the site. It didn’t work ten years ago and billions of dollars worth of VC money went down the rancid tubes of hundreds of short lived Silicon Valley start-ups.
And it’s beginning to look like deja vue all over again. Because, recent research has shown that one of the major reasons for the exodus of people from MySpace to Facebook is that MySpace users are being increasingly put off by the amount of advertising on the site. Owner Rupert Murdoch – The Wizened of Oz – Is continually talking about switching from an advertising model to a pay-for-content one on all his digital sites. Just last week, Jonathan Miller, his head of digital properties, was shooting his mouth off expressing his violent disagreement with free internet content. Speaking at yet another digital gab fest conference, he said he’d like to see at least some Hulu content restricted to subscribers. Yeah, and we know “some” soon becomes fucking “all!” He even claimed it was a well known fact that ad-supported content “doesn’t work,” saying that web companies should start weaning users off the free content they’ve come to expect by sticking them with a series of micropayments. Funny thing is, when he was AOL’s chief executive officer, in 2006, he made the decision to deep six their failing subscription model and make it a free service, supported by ads. OK, so what the fuck changed, Jonathon?
Actually, nothing has changed, because apart from Google, no one else is making serious money. People are thrashing around trying to define exactly how you make money in a Web 2.0, social media environment. I would predict that the pay-for-content model will also fall on stony ground. Not just because we are dealing with an entire generation who have grown used to not paying for cable or satellite TV, Newspapers and magazines, and increasingly music and movies. But also because there is so much stuff out there that they are afflicted with what Linda Stone has called “continuous partial attention.” And I don’t mean that multi-tasking bullshit everyone loves to talk about. I mean the fact that people spend less and less time focusing on a single thing because they are so fucking scared they’ll miss something, they are constantly scanning way too many things. To the point where some of these douchenozzles get killed crossing the road, ‘cos they’re tweeting about the great donut they just shoved down their pie-hole…
I have news for the Wizened of Oz. These people will not pay for content, yours or anyone else’s. Back to the drawing board guys.
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.
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