Tag Archive for 'myspace'

Quick Twitter Review and Other Ponderings

Twitter Logo

I’m beginning to like Twitter more and more. The only thing that’s stopping me from using it as much as possible is: the lack of pertinent users. I’m not talking about the awesome developers/leaders of their field people that I “follow”, but people that I actually know in, you know, real life. Outside of my nerdier friends, I don’t know of anyone that use Twitter. Yet.

But this situation is making me think about social networks in general: each network seems to create a culture of its own. This is not a new view on social networks, but it’s interesting I’m seeing it now with Twitter.

Facebook with their college crowd, Myspace with their musician/high school crowd, and now Twitter with their tech crowd.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that these social networks won’t grow into other groups of users. It’s just that certain networks tend towards a faster and wider adoption with the general population than others. And Twitter, at face value, just doesn’t seem to be a service that can grow very quickly.

I would never use the texting feature (thanks to the iPhone, I don’t have to), but I feel like this feature will help Twitter gain a wider appeal with the slightly more techie crowd.

I do like the 140 character limit, and not because it has to do with the limitations of the texting protocol, but because it puts some creative limits on what I am able to “tweet”. Also, the inability to edit an existing post makes you double check yourself before tweeting.

You know, I never thought about it, but there’s probably an iTunes to Twitter Applescript. The Twitter API is so freeing. But also… this can lead to information overload.

So much power. So much responsibility.

And that ends my rambling on Twitter.

The Moment I’ve Been Waiting For: Facebook Financial Numbers

Seriously, I still don’t understand how this guy is the CEO of this company. Really. Have you seen the 60 minutes segment on this guy? His looks, his personality, his style… all doesn’t fit into the CEO idea in my head. But anyway, he ended up dropping some numbers today.

Recap of Facebook Financial Info

Facebook’s Revenue: $150m

Facebook’s Projected Revenue: $300 to $350m

Facebook’s Projected Expenditures: $200m

Facebook’s EBITDA: $50m

All together this means: $150m negative projected for this year.

Of course, this doesn’t count the $300m in investments from Microsoft, so they’ll still be in business… but I sure hope they figure out how to make the money soon, and in a way that doesn’t piss off the users.

Source: Chatty Zuckerberg Tells All About Facebook Finances

Sidenote: MySpace

MySpace’s revenue (ending June 2007): $550m

MySpace’s profit (ending June 2007): $10m

Source: (MySpace revenue to top $800 million in fiscal 2008)

MySpace’s Projected Revenue (at Oct 2007):$800m

Source: (Murdoch Cuts MySpace 2008 Estimates)

User “Counts”

Regardless of how much I hate MySpace, people use it. People click on the advertisements, and so MySpace keeps making money.

The point here is that it’s good to be #1. MySpace has more than 110m monthly active users (Social Network Stats:Facebook, MySpace, Reunion), while facebook has 68m monthly active users (The shy Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook).

If all these numbers are right, then Facebook has some serious catching up to do. Here’s my fuzzy math on revenue per user:

Revenue / Monthly Active Users of MySpace = 550/110 = 5

Revenue / Monthly Active Users of Facebook = 150/68 ~= 2.2

Does this mean a Facebook times 2 equals a MySpace in revenue?

My Takeaway/Realization From All This Math

If you’re making a free “social network”, and your single monetization strategy is advertising, you better hope you’re #1. Or freaking close to it.