These news make it all sound a bit shaky:
No good times for Yahoo!: Another One Bites The Dust- Yahoo To Kill Buzz On April 21
Drastic: “We originally heard that Yahoo was “sunsetting” Buzz back in December, as well as Delicious, AltaVista, MyBlogLog, Yahoo! Bookmarks, Yahoo! Picks, and AlltheWeb.”
Wall Street Gives Larry Page A Big -1
Google is profitable, but getting seemingly redundant (and non-productive) additional costs due to inter-company competition about talents: “Revenues did rise an impressive 27 percent, but expenses grew an even larger 34 percent, partly due to across-the-board salary raises and ballooning talent retention packages.”
Here’s a guy that knows his responsibilities, not: “Page didn’t even hang around to answer any questions, during a less than stellar quarter when the company is undergoing many changes internally. He would have been better off not even appearing at all.”
And then back to the actual topic: BBC News – How can social networks make money-
“Advertising is at the heart of most internet success stories. But in some ways social networks are uniquely engineered as money-making machines. Because you’re creating the content and you’re making up the content for free, all that social networking has to do is put the ads next to it,” says Paul Lee, of Deloitte Research.”
“The promise of matching people with products makes social networks attractive to advertisers, and Facebook deals add location into the mix. Users check in on their mobiles and get special offers in return.”
“I think people are prepared to give up some of their data without too much effort and, in exchange for that, get a free service,” says Lee.
Wrong. People give up their data because they don’t understand the ramifications and possible uses of their data. They assume the service is free.
“”Every message that gets sent out can be used by companies like Microsoft and Google to analyse trending topics and what people are talking about right now,” he adds.”
Maybe that’s the real business for Twitter.