I'll admit that I love debating, even to the point where people don't like me. I probably have to add that I don't debate if I don't feel strongly about my point of view.

I read an article on Memeburn about the so-called "social media" bubble. Of course, I was intrigued when I saw the title "Social media: Is it a bubble and will it burst?" Investment into social media companies (startups and not) have escalated to the point where more than half of TechCrunch's articles are about angel and VC investments into startups (side note: yes, I know that's probably not the best measure of a "bubble", but you get the point).

The article, in short, talks about how companies are spending advertising budget on social networks and gives a hint of a throwback to social media monetisation. In this context it refers to the dotcom-boom; a period of time that saw investors, public and private, lose billions of dollars. The problem with the article is that the author creates the illusion that advertisers were, and could be, the big losers in an industry bubble, which of course makes no sense.

Here's my laundry list, referring to the article:

"more brands are throwing resources into interacting with customers on social media, and there is still no real clarity about how most social networking sites are going to monetise"

Sure, that statement's true, but it goes against the argument that companies are becoming 'disillusioned' and looking to spend its budgets elsewhere.

"There were 90 000 fewer [Facebook] users in France, down 20 000 in Italy and Canada was down by just over 400 000 users. Is this the beginning of a significant trend?"

I highly doubt that. Facebook has been growing by about 50m users in two months, and I can only suspect that the movie about it, as well as all the press it's getting will fuel that growth further. Social media has become the fourth biggest online marketing budget attraction, tied with user conversions and just behind search and web development (eMarketer, 2010). Almost half of Twitter's current users joined the service in 2010 (Sysomos, 2010). In my view, this concludes that users are happy on social networks (they have been for years), brands are reaching their users, and social networks are making their ad revenues.

"There are a number of reasons that the bubble will not burst dramatically as it did during the dot-com collapse, starting with the fact that the barriers to entry into social network are relatively low for most brands." and "Most brands could easily cut their losses and disengage if they had to"

 So brands won't get hurt if 'the bubble pops'? Huh?! Brands are not the ones that are even in this equation. If any bubble bursts, it's the company shareholders - be it public or private investors, anyone who owns enterprise equity - who will get hurt. If all the newspapers in the world suddenly fail, people would just read something else and advertisers will move there. No brands would get hurt, only shareholders.

Sure, companies who spent marketing budget on these social channels will, in the case of the article, forfeit the returns on it. But for a company to get seriously hurt by e.g. the failure of Facebook, they would have to spend an amount of money on marketing that wouldn't make sense in the first place.

So why did I feel the need to write about this article? Firstly, I generally like the type of journalism and coverage that you find on Memeburn. Yes, a lot of articles are of an "international" nature, but in most cases they are written from a South African view (or should I say developing worldview). It's just that this article has no point.

The article would have actually made sense if it focused on the following:

• Capital investments: The growth of investments into social media startups over the past 5 years.
• Monetisation: The possibility that social networks will not be sustainable in the long run by purely focusing on ad revenue.
• Alternative revenue streams: Look at other possibilities (and examples) that could generate income for social networks.
• Boom similarities: Are there any parallels between the dotcom-boom and the social media boom?
• Timeline: If this is a bubble, how long will it take for it to build up enough momentum to burst?

That would have answered the title question. And if that's not what the author wanted to say, why write it in the first place?

The Facebook Platform has recently been improved with the launch of the Graph API, Open Graph Protocol and its efforts in creating a more secure network for its users by making use of OAuth authentication.

Here’s the presentation – it’s fairly top-line but should be self explanatory.

 http://prezi.com/3qwc9zw4gg37/the-facebook-platform/

I saw a very interesting video that basically showcases the iPad’s ability to be a magazine reader.

What’s interesting to me is how the device transforms a magazine into a monthly (or similar) website. This then makes one wonder... Well, about a couple of things:

• Will websites become redundant and merge into monthly/quarterly subscriptions (or vice versa) as the iPad would offer at the moment?
• Looking at web consumption now, you are more prone to read a bit of this and a bit of that. This makes me think that magazines would eventually move to a story/genre subscription option, to offer something for everyone – even that person not necessarily interested in reading the whole FT.
• This could spawn something reminiscent of digital satellite television, where one would subscribe to a bouquet of rich media articles.
• Television shows would be able to make the transition into a rich, user-engaging format.
  

These are just some of my thoughts, but from the looks of it, there are many opportunities and the possibility of a media industry shake-up. It’s still early days, though, so let’s sit back and see what happens.

As an outsider, my answer would be yes – if mainstream media is to be believed.

To give you a bit of background, Martha Stewart was invited to talk at the Design Indaba – an annual design conference held in Cape Town featuring the best in design (graphic, etc.) from SA and the world. She’s scheduled to do two talks, the first one of which caused a big rah-rah.

On Friday afternoon during her talk, she covered topics such as her life, her dogs, her empire and apparently this was enough for people to start walking out of the talk. In droves. SA journalists mentioned on Twitter that people left the main hall “giggling as they follow #martha #designindaba twees”(sic).

I have to admit: I'll come clean and say that I’m no Martha Stewart fan, whatsoever. But do feel that the way mainstream media has handled the situation is nothing short of unprofessional. It’s not because they were criticizing the talk – of course it’s the media’s duty to deliver good, objective criticism – but this was downright one-sided, almost as if the SA media (or at least those involved) had something to prove, a shoulder-chip to get rid of, some BIG star to pick on (shall I say “at LAST!”). Here’s what they had to say...

See below for more clippings.

These from an editor’s blog http://www.bizcommunity.com/Blog/LouiseMarsland/2010/2/26/-Design-Indaba-conf... :

“Delivering a presentation more suited to the Krugersdorp Vrouefederasie or the Belville Housewives Scrapbooking Circle”
- I’m from the Belville area, what the heck is wrong with that?

And so we get another twiord (twitter word): she was ‘twitter
slapped' (twitapped?) by the twitterverse. Twerrible.
- That’s very hip... To twalk like that, y’know.

I also wanted to put down a couple from The Times, but unfortunately their website was down on Friday night... Ahem.

I’m all for the media taking on the position of voicing public opinion, but this comes across as media who finally had the opportunity to pick on a big gun. It’s a bit like a big-boned 5y/o going to a new school and suddenly having an arsenal of bully weapons to pick from.

It’s as if the (involved) SA media couldn’t wait to have their own Twitter moment. You know, that moment that they can say “hey, remember that time we threw Martha under the bus? Wasn’t that just the bomb?”

Like I said earlier, I wasn’t there, but the way this was handled was in bad taste. There's a deeper story to this type of behavior, but that's a post for another day.

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