– Social Net Model Vulnerable To Ad Slowdown: The Economist has a kind of social-nets-for-beginners story. In parts it makes it sounds like the social net ad-based business model is a sure thing following the News Corp.-Google deal, but goes on to make the salient point that the revenue of these sites will be in serious trouble if the ad market bottoms out. The piece indirectly quotes McKinsey consultant Geoffrey Sands saying that because advertisers get out of the least proven media first, a crash would produce a shake out and only the strongest will survive. Best push ahead with those music downloads, and the rest. (Did I mention downloads insurance?)
— YouTube – UK’s fastest growing web brand: Neilsen/NetRatings put YouTube’s July 2006 UK audience at 3.6 million – a 478 percent increase in the first half of the year that makes the site the Uk’s fastest growing web brand. Flickr has growth of 131 percent to 1 million over the same period, and MySpace 98 percent to 3.5 million.
— Social nets need regulation: Social nets need to introduce stiffer user regulations, according to a study by the watchdog “Computing Which” after finding porn, inappropriate ads and evidence of bullying on sites with no age verification or ID checks. Later: Responding to heightened safety concerns, Bebo, which is the UK’s most popular social net and focused on schools, announced it is to work with schools in the UK and Ireland on training material for teachers about social nets, and also on strategies to tackle cyber-bullying.
— Viral video chart: Unruly Media has started viralvideochart.com which, it says, scans several million blogs every day to compile a list of the most talked-about videos. That said, a clip’s popularity doesn’t necessarily reflect any meaningful social or political import: today’s number one is the John Stewart clip “President Bush uses Little Richard as translator.”
This article originally appeared in MediaGuardian.
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