Social services
The Internet commercial model has long been ‘traffic first, revenue later' and nowhere is this better exemplified than the two biggest social networking sites: Facebook and Twitter. Between them they have zillions of subscribers but are struggling to make money on the back of them.
It looks like things are changing, however, according to a couple of reports on the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau). The first refers to a study on insidefacebook.com, which reckons Facebook will generate over a billion dollars in revenue this year, having raked-in around two thirds of a billion last year.
Most of this was from advertising, with the ability to precisely target end-users proving popular. Microsoft's Bing search engine advertised its Facebook page on the Farmville game and acquired 400,000 new ‘fans' in one day recently.
The second story reports Twitter membership growing by 1500 percent last year, and activity figures recently released by twitter seem to back that up. The story also says Twitter has recently announced a new search advertising model similar to that used by Google. We can't find an official announcement, but the WSJ's allthingsd.com published some inside info to that effect last week.
