· Facebook fatigue #2 ·
You might have heard me complain in mid-December about an ailment called Facebook fatigue. Sure, the cure is easy: get out more.
However social media is here to stay: read The Register's report on Facebook fatigue.
That "user engagement" is dropping off (page impression growth is merely slowing) should be of particular concern for the sales people struggling to turn these free services into profit-making businesses.
If you substitute "sales people" with "online campaigners" and "profit-making businesses" with "more supporters" (or similar non-profit language), it's no wonder marketing departments at non-profit orgs are asking whether they should bother getting involved (you know who you are, old-skoolers!). Those orgs that haven't spent any time nurturing networks online must be smugly congratulating themselves right now for "knowing" social networking was just a short-term trend.
See, here's the thing: the web is still newish and it's still evolving quickly. If your organisation isn't proactive on the web, it will get left behind. You can't sit back and expect people to simply type in your URL ... you need to entice them over with little cupcakes of interesting information. Which means you have to get involved in stuff like social media, even if isn't doing as well as everybody hoped. (There's still millions of people using it!)
Ahem, The Register continues ...
This time around, expect spinners to work on massaging the comScore figures, and happy-clappy bloggers to leap to social networking's defense by claiming the falls are sign of the market maturing, and of fierce competition. They could be right, but it still means that the individual businesses are not the goldmine their greedy backers slavered over.
happy-clappy? nah, not me, I'm no hippy :)
They make a good point tho: evangelists who continue to preach about the perpetual goodness of online social media without considering the weaknesses and threats are just plain irresponsible.
-----
[edit] Heh. Have just been over to Laurel's blog and seen that she's also blogged about The Register article with a slightly different (although not completely dissimilar) perspective.
Monday February 4, 2008
Categories: Campaigning
Commenting is closed for this article.