Week of August 6, 2007

Social Success of Social Nets Slowing Online Ad Growth?

Friday, August 10, 2007

To clarify, this does not mean that online sales are decreasing, merely that its spectacular growth is now merely impressive. The problem is that many social networks are such tight-knit communities that advertisers are finding difficulties in taking advantage of them. This is just another example of advertisers having to learn new approaches to inform and involve customers rather than merely selling to them.

Media Consumption Decreases

Thursday, August 9, 2007

For the first time in 10 years, media consumption in the US is down, according to a survey done by Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private equity firm that invests buyout and structured capital funds in the media, communications, information and education industries in North America and Europe. But while media usage showed a slight decline, advertising continues to grow rapidly, especially online.

Overall, the decline in media usage was just .5%, but the study also shows that consumers are shifting away from advertising-supported media (down 6.3% since 2001) in favor of consumer-supported media (up 19.8%since '01) such as cable TV and video games. Long term, VSS predicts that media consumption will start to rise again and, most importantly, that Internet advertising will beams the #1 advertising medium, taking over from newspapers, by 2011.

You Can't Escape The Internet Part Two

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Launching yesterday in beta was Spock.com, which is a site that data mines the Internet and, specifically, social networking sites for information about individuals. It then aggregates the data and presents it to the searcher. Ever want to know if your knitting hobby that you mentioned once in your Friendster profile four years ago will get out in public? Go to spock.com and find out.

Google Filters Torrents

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

The core engine of peer-to-peer sharing these days is bittorrent. Bittorrent allows files to be split among multiple computers, and for users to download the data from the computer with the available data and best connection. The efficiency of bittorrent downloading (and the fact that there are no central servers for the MPAA or RIAA to shut down) has made it practically impossible to hault for rights holders.

Data exchanged via bittorrent uses a file called a "torrent" to identify the file and its associated data for transfer. Searching for files is as easy as finding a torrent on the Internet. Famous filesharing site The Pirate Bay doesn't actually host files, it is really nothing more than a search engine for torrent files. Although there are plenty of torrent search sites, finding a torrent can be as easy as simply doing a Google search for the file you want and the word "torrent." Well, not anymore.

Due to DMCA complaints, Google has started filtering out torrent files from its search results. While this has any practical impact on torrent searches (you can always find them via The Pirate Bay, for instance), it does have an interesting legal impact: Google is reacting to a DMCA takedown notice, even though there aren't any legal precedents for Google to do so. The implication from at least one site is that Google is tiring from defending what is now an endless line of lawsuits over its services.

You Can't Escape The Internet

Monday, August 6, 2007

There are very few secrets in the Internet age, as Rudy Giuliani found out today: His daughter's Facebook profile showed her as a supporter of Barack Obama. She quickly removed herself from the Barack One Million Strong group when asked about it by the press, but by then it was too late, and the whole world knows: Even Giuliani's own daughter doesn't support him.