Moses Kagan's Aurora Borealis

Techcrunch has more on the MoveOn versus Facebook controversy. For those living under a rock, MoveOn objects to Facebook's new advertising platform, which takes disrespect for user privacy to new heights by publishing details of user purchases in the Facebook newsfeed.

Why is MoveOn, a liberal non-profit which has, until now, focused on politics, getting involved in a public spat with an internet company?

Consider the demographic of this issue: MoveOn, which survives on donations, wants / needs to connect with voters likely to be amenable to the MoveOn message. Young people tend to be more liberal than older people. Educated people are more likely to be liberal than uneducated people. Facebook's users are disproportionately young and educated.

By positioning itself as the champion of Facebook's users (through this personal information gathering petition), MoveOn is reaping millions of dollars worth of free publicity and introducing itself to millions of people in its target demographic.

Pretty amazing marketing strategy, if you ask me.

Labels: facebook, moveon.org

Just like everyone else, I love (and use) the site. However...

Facebook is only ever going to be Yahoo 2.0.

Like Yahoo, Facebook:

1. Has an enormous audience with diverse interests
2. Has an audience composed of people who do not come to the site in search of specific goods / services / information

Therefore, Facebook is only ever going to be a display advertising business, one which generates such a high volume of impressions that supply will always outstrip demand. Sure, on the margins, Facebook will come up with innovative campaigns, improved targeting, etc. But fundamentally, its audience is not sitting there with mouse in one hand and credit card in the other. Therefore, it ain't Google.

How about comparing Yahoo and Facebook in terms of revenue:

In 2007, Yahoo is going to do between $6.5b and $7b in revenue, leading the market to value it at $35b and change.

In 2007, Facebook is going to do $150-200 MILLION in revenue off of 45m users. Incidentally, 50% of this is coming from one (probably money-losing) deal with Microsoft.

To reach Yahoo's revenue figures, Facebook is going to have to increase its top line by 30-35x.

And, if it reaches that magical milestone with margins similar to Yahoo's, Facebook will be making $1.5-2b in cash from operations per year. Which is considerably less than half of what Google made last year.

In short, we're watching the rise of Yahoo 2.0, not some paradigm shifting behemoth. So everyone should calm down.

Labels: facebook, Google, Yahoo

David Carpe, of passingnotes.com, has an awful post on what he thinks Google is going to do in 2008:What Google is Really Doing for 2008.

Carpe's big idea is that Google is going to flip a switch on what will be the biggest social network in the world by knitting together each of its different social apps (Google Pages, Calendar, Gmail, etc.). He thinks this is going to blow MySpace / Facebook / etc. off the map.

What Carpe doesn't realize is that Google's not cool. It's slick, it works really well, it 'organizes the world's information'. But it's not cool. And social networking sites, at least the ones that target teenagers (the heaviest users), need to be cool. They need to stand for something, whether it's music (like MySpace or Last.fm) or college gossip and hookups (Facebook) or whatever. By standing for something, and basing their design decisions around that one thing, the best networks create communities with distinct feelings.

So, David: Who, exactly, identifies with 'organizing the world's information'?

Labels: facebook, Google, MySpace, social-networking