This just in - MySpace to get pwn3d by Google

A couple of days ago, I made some Fearless Predictions about the future of social networking, including the observation that MySpace was becoming the new AltaVista… and today, we have news that MySpace and Google are negotiating a new deal for how MySpace will display Google advertising.  A few years ago, when MySpace was hot-as-the-sun, Google ended up paying $900m, or about $300m/year.  These days, MySpace is losing users and traffic, at a clip of about 20% per year, and now MySpace needs Google much more than Google needs MySpace…

Sources say that while Google has gotten plenty of advertising impressions (MySpace uses any excuse to put Google search results and Google ads in front of users), those ads don’t convert well. Add to that the dramatic shrinking of MySpace page views and the predictive modeling gets ugly.

Google knows MySpace is shrinking by about 20% a year. And unlike the last time they negotiated with News Corp., they now have nearly three years of actual operating history with the company. They’ve got real data to value the deal.

Unless Microsoft or perhaps Yahoo comes in and bids very aggressively, MySpace is going to get slaughtered in the negotiations.

Like I said, MySpace = AltaVista…  doomed.

Thirty Helens Agree - Facebook Fanclubs are out-of-control

Facebook must be a fascinating place for Sociologists to watch, because popular-trends grow, evolve, and die at an accelerated rate there.  The first one I experienced was the, “25 Things About Me” notes… seeming it started slowly, but with a frequency that let you know that it was going to eventually explode.  Then came the “Top-5 Craze”, where folks posted the five NFL teams they hated the most, or the 5 movies they know by heart, etc…  to a certain extent, Top-5’s still pop-up, but a lot less these days. Currently, the “Quiz Craze” dominates Facebook, where you take a quiz to see which Friends character ‘you are’, or the ideal city for you, and so on. However, a new trend is quickly emerging, which promises to be much more annoying than any of the previous ones… as the “Quiz Craze” quickly fades, the “Fan Club for Everything Craze” is cranking up to be huge.

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The future of Social Networks

To know the future, just look to the past.  Each of the big Social Networking, “Web 2.0″, sites share commonalities with Web 1.0 sites that were popular ‘in their day’…  and this is not necessarily a good thing for the Social Networks.  For example:

Flickr is the new GeoCities…  a very popular place for people to upload their content.  Getting people to upload and view content is one thing, but turning that into a profitable business is another.
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