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Fastest Growing Search Engines? Facebook and MySpace

Posted: 04 Sep 2008 04:32 PM CDT

According to this July’s comscore data the fastest growing locations for search are Facebook and MySpace. MySpace had 539 million searches and Facebook had 173 million. My guess is that these searches are only domestic searches which would account for the large difference. Whatever the case is these numbers are far below Google’s search volume which fell just under 10 billion searches for the month with 4 percent monthly growth.

Last week I suggested that Facebook has a huge search monetization opportunity and this solidifies that argument. Facebook has a ways to go before it catches up to the large search giants (aka Google) but they are almost a quarter of the size of AOL in terms of search and almost half the size of eBay which has a shopping system which is practically built on search.

As the Wall Street Journal higlighted today, search is dominating advertising with the most growth. The article suggests there is as an increasing gap between search an other advertising models (primarily banner). Social advertising is a new form of medium though so growth is hard to measure, especially since Facebook and other social networks don’t publicly release their ad revenue.

While MySpace and Facebook are searching for non-traditional advertising methods online, their quick path to profitability may be staring them in the face. Then again Google’s search deal with MySpace has been under-performing according to Google. This is troubling news considering that MySpace accounts for more searches then eBay, Craigslist, Facebook and Amazon at this point.

It will be interesting to see how the advertising battle plays out but given that social advertising is still such a nascent industry, one can only expect to see growth. We have seen a massive influx of new social advertising solutions and according to people I’ve been speaking with there are more that are about to hit the market.

While most of the market is out experimenting it may be time for Facebook and other large social networks to try what has worked for the past decade: search.

OpenSocial Foundation Launches

Posted: 04 Sep 2008 02:10 PM CDT

-OpenSocial Logo- Today the OpenSocial participants jointly announced the launch of the OpenSocial Foundation. The organization’s purpose it to keep OpenSocial as a separate entity which is independent of ownership by any individual group. The current participants are hi5, Google, Flixster, MySpace and Yahoo! Today’s announced came with the launch of the OpenSocial Foundation website which appears to be simply a source of information.

Just yesterday we announced that hi5 had launched OpenSocial version 0.8 which includes a set of REST APIs. One commenter posted that they had tried out the new version of OpenSocial on hi5 and had substantial technical issues. I also highlighted that OpenSocial still has some catching up to do to compete with Facebook as their platform has become the top choice for developers on the social web.

MySpace is currently catching up to Facebook making them the leading implementer of OpenSocial. OpenSocial has high hopes and according to many developers that have build on top of the standard, it has made it much easier for them to port their applications across platforms. What used to be a “coalition of the willing” has rapidly become a tightly knit group of social web leaders.

For more information check out the OpenSocial Foundation site. The site includes a FAQ, the organization’s Bylaws and a number of other resources. Also be sure to check out the MySpace developer post regarding this announcement.

The New Software Distributor: Platform Owners

Posted: 04 Sep 2008 11:33 AM CDT

Do you remember the days when you had to walk into a computer store to buy software? I remember Egghead software down the street from me where you would go to actually purchase games and other types of computer software. Soon enough those days will be long forgotten. This transformation has been taking place extremely fast and much of that transformation has taken place in the last couple years.

Platforms Are for Distribution

In my series on the social web economy, I’ve highlighted platforms as the center for distribution. While I’ve yet to cover all of the types of companies and how they interact, platforms are increasingly about being the center location for software to be distributed. When the Facebook platform launched last year, it was one of the first to bring this idea of instant installation on the platform to the mainstream.

Initially when you developed software, it was the job of the software developer to handle 99 percent of the promotion. One of the key selling points for many of these software packages was the platform that they ran on. There were categories in actual stores which classified software as “IBM Compatible”. Eventually that transformed to mean that your software worked on Windows but ultimately it still required visiting a store to purchase the software.

Even today, there still is no central directory owned by Microsoft that is the primary location which consumers visit for finding and downloading Windows compatible software. Same thing goes for Apple. While there is the Windows Marketplace and the Apple store, neither stores are comprehensive and fully supportive of third-party developers.

A New Model of Distribution Emerges

The Facebook platform was a complete paradigm shift for most people in the industry. The concept that you could install an application with the click of a button was game shifting. No matter how that installation took place (the application wasn’t actually being “installed” on your computer), it made people realize that a centralized application directory owned by the platform owner was a great model.

It was so great that every other social network adopted the model within months and now we have Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, hi5, imeem, Bebo, Friendster, Meebo and many others all with their own platforms. The majority all have their own application directories. While this new model of distribution was made popular by Facebook (as far as I can tell), all other operating systems and platforms have adopted this model.

Not only has there been a paradigm shift for platform owners but consumers as well. Users of Facebook should soon be asking, why can’t I access software for my computer the same way that I can on Facebook and MySpace?

Distribution is Going Mobile

Fortunately for Apple, you can! When Apple released their iPhone this summer, users flocked in droves to downloaded the latest applications that they could install on their phone. Millions of applications have been downloaded and it appears that the trend isn’t stopping. Google has announced their Android market which will launch later this year, Microsoft has announced their intent to launch a mobile distribution product and all the other platforms are racing to do the same.

Earlier this week I learned that Nokia has their own application directory. According to one person I’ve spoken to at Nokia, they’ve had this for years it’s just that most consumers in the U.S. haven’t been aware of it. The bottom line is that every single mobile operating system will soon have a centralized software distribution service.

All Operating Systems Will Have Central Distribution Channels

The race began with social platforms and transferred to mobile but I would argue that the battle will transfer to all operating systems. For example, why can I only download applications for my iPhone or iPod touch within iTunes? Shouldn’t I be able to download software for my computer? Apple hit a grand slam when they launched iTunes in that it runs on both P.C. and Mac!

The only competitor that Microsoft has is the Zune and so far there are no signs that it has been extremely successful (although I have friends who rave about it). Apple started by cornering the market on legal music distribution and they may end up cornering the market on legal software distribution if Microsoft doesn’t do something about it quickly.

While you can get into a theoretical discussion about the future of cloud computing versus personal computing, the reality is that most consumers still use personal consumers and install software on them. There is still a giant market for this and as far as I know there isn’t a central location for downloading all the applications you need for your computer.

Do you know of any alternative software distribution channels? What are your thoughts on this new paradigm?

Offerpal Launches MySpace “Onboarding” Feature

Posted: 04 Sep 2008 09:22 AM CDT

-Offerpal Media Logo- Yesterday Offerpal Media announced the launch of an “onboarding” feature for MySpace applications. What does this mean exactly? Well, MySpace developers can ultimately integrate Offerpal’s advertising services quicker and easier than before. The bigger story is that Offerpal claims to be seeing nearly equal activity on MySpace as they are on Facebook. What does this means in terms of engagement?

Not much because correlating Offerpal payouts with the absolute number of active users is not completely accurate. The reality is that MySpace users could be more likely to be converted into recipients of Offerpal’s “offers”. Unfortunately we don’t have enough data to make this correlation. What we can say is that that CPA advertising models appear to be the most effective so far on social platforms.

Many have considered the CPA model to be controversial as historically there have been many misleading offers provided to users. The result is still the same though with Offerpal touting an extremely high payout for average active daily users. What does all this mean? Honestly, there doesn’t appear to be nothing new to be honest. MySpace has continued to see growth and is increasingly rivaling the dominant Facebook platform.

Competition is clearly heating up though as Super Rewards, Offerpal and Social Cash compete for new developers and fight to retain existing customers. Some companies have been accused of playing dirty in terms of locking in developers and slandering competitors but playing dirty in a CPA/offer-based environment isn’t far from par.

It’s clear that the point and reward-based advertising appears to be most effective at generating the highest ad revenue for many of the larger applications, especially games. It will be interesting to see if this advertising model continues to dominate or if we see new forms emerge.

LinkedIn Connects With CNBC

Posted: 04 Sep 2008 08:35 AM CDT

Yesterday afternoon LinkedIn announced that they had launched a new partnership with CNBC. There are a number of implications of the partnership. Dan Nye announced the three main areas:

Content Syndication on LinkedIn - LinkedIn users will now have access to news from CNBC. This is actually a big win for CNBC and highlights LinkedIn’s knowledge that social networks are increasingly a center for traditional media distribution.
LinkedIn Community on CNBC.com - Back in July LinkedIn announced that they would begin enabling users to share content from the New York Times. It appears that they have sparked a similar agreement with CNBC. This time around there are no screenshots of how this integration will take place.
Live LinkedIn Interactions on CNBC - One final point of cooperation between LinkedIn and CNBC is that CNBC will include “survey results and on-air Q&A with CNBC anchors, reporters and guests.” Unfortunately we haven’t been able to see this yet but I have seen live polls on CNBC so this appears to be an additional channel for CNBC to get poll results. Live Q&As sounds interesting but we’d have to see this in practice to understand more.

This sounds like a great partnership for LinkedIn and it highlights the increasing cooperation between social networks and traditional media outlets as both parties try to explore a nascent area in new media.

Who Knows What Social Networks Are? I do!

Posted: 03 Sep 2008 06:13 PM CDT

-emarketer study chart- Today eMarketer, the source of the most accurate data in the world (just joking), released a report suggesting that 58 percent of people globally don’t know what social networking is. The Netherlands appeared to be the most acitve group polled as 36.4 percent of those polled are active on a social network. The findings show that 3.48 billion people still are unaware of what social networks are.

Does this survey really provide any contextual relevance? Not at all! What percentage of the globe has access to the Internet? Well according to the site Internet World Stats, less than 1.5 billion people even have access to internet. That means that an even larger percentage know what social networks are but have now way of accessing them!

If you are reading this article then there is a really good chance that you are a member of at least one social network if not many. This is still a significant luxury for most. Not Mashable, Wired, SitePoint or WebProNews seemed to figure out why the numbers were so low. If you think about it, the fact that so many people are knowledgeable about social networks is actually significant. One thing that I’ve learned from this study? Most technology writers are extremely removed from “reality”. Not sure that this is too shocking though.

I think that some of these numbers are impressive and it also suggests that if you have access to the internet, there’s a pretty good chance that you are on a social network or will soon be on one. Unfortunately the study which calculates number of social networks users as a percentage of total population doesn’t relate the numbers to the total number of internet users in each country.

In other words this study is pretty much useless for deriving any sort of significant conclusion. It was instead extremely effective at getting a lot of people to link back to the site!