It’s nice to see that despite the growth in eyeballs, people realize that social networking is a hypester phenomenon amongst marketers. They won’t really touch it, and compared to the enormous web advertising pie, it will always remain a rounding error. From CNET:
Social-networking sites will enlist 230 million active members by the end of the year and will keep attracting new users until at least 2009, according to an analyst report. But investors are still wary–and for good reason, as long-term growth is by no means certain.
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.
It also suggests revenues from social-networking services will hit $965 million this year, swelling to $2.4 billion by 2012.
Growth in the membership of social-networking sites varies dramatically by region, according to the analyst, which predicts Asia Pacific will account for 35 percent of global social networking users by the end of this year, followed by EMEA (28 percent), North America (25 percent), and the Caribbean and Latin America (12 percent).
Admittedly, this does beg the question then, why does Facebook command a whopping valuation? Because, like MySpace, Facebook is a social phenomenon, literally a one-in-a-million occurrence. But for all of the remaining wannabe has-beens, this report should be a wake up call: build an actual company!
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