Yahoo set to announce biggest layoffs since the dotcom bubble burst – Social Networks are to blame

Great comments Miro - it will be interesting to see what happens this year - especially now that facebook connect is out and directly competing with other open ID platforms.

Phil

I think the answer is a lot more complex.
Yahoo layoffs are partly related to the microhoo misadventure
which has deflected the company from moving forward on some new initiatives.

I see that the US Yahoo email service is starting to transition to the inbox 2.0 vision announced by Jerry a couple of years ago.

I think it can/will have a significant impact on facebook/social media use - because there are no walled gardens to contend with as everyone has each other's email address. I think it will appeal to the 80% of the 80/20 pareto rule to drift away from other apps. Just look at Tweets - how are they any different than email/SMS?

FB will continue - but the audience will change.
Folks will still have a FB presence - but not be (as) active on it as noted above. Personally I am not impressed with the old-school approach they have taken to display adverts - and I suspect that many folks are like me and ignoring the ads. My Space is making some interesting channel lineup changes to their garden community that might gain traction with new folks.

The great unknown is the media transition as we go mobile. The multi-band winners will be the ones who figure that out the best. It will take more than just scaling the online presence to fit the pixel and bandwidth constraint of mobile computing/phones/communicators.

What doesn't get discussed very often is the channel's ability to provide captivating advertising (engaging is a word that I have come to hate because of its misuse). With so much stuff being thrown out at people we are becoming conditioned to ignore things - and the online space responds by increasing the opportunity to have more things thrown out at us which.... Undoubtedly the social graph, BT and proximity will help refine the "what" of relevance - there is still the core matter of "how and why" that marketers/advertisers need to address.

Sorry if I drifted a little off topic - but I think its the core question we need to ask in order to understand how the channel will survive/evolve, otherwise the simple answer will be Google/PPC.

cheers
Miro

well, hi admin adn people nice forum indeed. how's life? hope it's introduce branch ;)

Even if facebook stopped right now, nobody can argue they have a great concept. By the simple act af logging in, you are privy to your friends activities, what movies they watch, what books they read, where they eat. The PERFECT viral marketing tool. But if you aren’t spending 20 minutes a day, then you’re not really getting the full benefit (from a marketers point of view)

The difference between netvibes and an application like facebook, is no phryls (or ads) on netvibes, and that’s what we’re talking about here.

similarly i use Trillian to access my yahoo messenger and my two or three MSN accounts all at the same time and NO ads.

And if I understand data portability correctly (and I’m sure I don’t) the concept would use a forum like netvibes to import (and export) only the data you wanted from (and to) various applications. So once again, no ads and potentially no frills, like “clients favourite”.

This is really fodder for a later blog, but I don’t think it’s the application facebook that is the problem. It’s the way we access that site (and ones like it) The more I think about this, the more I think the hardware needs to come first. Something bigger than a PDA and smaller than a laptop like “ASUS Eee PC”. (windows version coming out later this year ?) 4 trips of 5 minutes on a small device, seems more in line with my leisure computer usage, and that seems more likely with a smaller easier to access device. …

Let me ask this, why do you think the honeymoon over for so many of us?

Although Yahoo probably has the best webmail out there, Yahoo! has failed in the web 2.0 arena - I think they need a good web 2.0 person to pull this off... Mind you, they could surprise us...

David - you raise an interesting point of view. I know others who say the honeymoon is over for them as well on facebook...but like you, they get their facebook email or updates through a news aggregator like netvibes, through SMS updates, or through the mobile version. In all examples, you are still connecting with facebook.

I don't disagree that facebook may have a limited lifespan in its current form, but nobody really expects them to stand still for very long.

If true data portability happens as blogged on this site, everything can and will change again

I feel obliged to speak (sorry)
When I first signed up to facebook I was on it all day every day, I am ashamed to say it was a life killer… or at least a work killer.
After a few months I was surfing 20 – 30 minutes a day (according to our bacon boy the “Canadian average”)
Now (just shy of a year later), my only access to facebook is the app on my netvibes page, so other than the limited 411 netvibes forwards I never access my facebook account.

I have to wonder if the “hype” over these social sites is being way overblown b/c of the staggering amount new memberships and the overwhelming hours new members spend using facebook. Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t we see this exact same trend with MySpace??

Let me address Phil’s point directly, I spend WAY more time a day using Google than I do using facebook. I would venture a guess that after people recover from saying hi to all their old high school friends, and posting their pictures, and playing a couple rounds of scrabble, they too will return to reality.

'who is next?' facebook is next.

Plus lets face it, everybody loves print :)

start flame ....
now