Social Media in their early life are a lot like Multi-Level Marketing. Or a Ponzi scheme for that matter.
Their exponential growth depends a lot on people’s spreading the word that they are growing like mad.
At some point reality meets the road. That happens one of two ways. Corruption / fraud / mismanagement / criminality take it down. Or it just fails to deliver.
The best of them meet the challenge, mature, and enter a new phase. But most organizations don’t meet the challenge.
MySpace is almost gone. News Corp. is having a fire sale trying to unload it. It couldn’t be sustained just by musicians looking for audiences, plus pre-teen girls pretending to be 16.
Now everyone is on Facebook.
But the chinks are starting to show, and I hope Zuck and company are paying attention.
Click-through rates for Facebook ads are declining. Criminals and sharks of all sorts are hacking accounts, finding creative ways to lie, cheat, steal and deceive.
After explosive growth for months in my number of friends, that has slowed WAY down. And guess what?
I’m spending much less time on FB now. I’m on to the Next Big Thing.
Twitter is SO interesting.