“Buried in Google’s quarterly results was a note saying that it was having a harder time than anticipated getting ad revenue out of MySpace. Surprise, it’s turning out that social networking is not the holy grail of advertising—people don’t like to have ads shoved at them when they are connecting. For this reason, there is a lot of defection going on in the social networking area, as people leave and set up their own gated social networks. If you want to advertise to them, you have to ask permission.” Hmm, interesting.

When author Bruce Nussbaum went on to ask how you’d advertise to a niche such as the WEF’s Young Global Leaders group my comment was to keep it human.

Interesting reflection on financial side of social networking. Was at the techie Flag and Bell pub crawl last night (at the Exchange Bar in China Twon to be precise) and was talking about this subject. I think the key is in the niche use of social networking, but then I would say that as that’s what I’m interested in: medical imaging professionals (eg radRounds), accountants (eg ION) , Brazilians (eg Orkut), and social networking:

“Someone, somewhere is supposed to be raking it in from social media—but we never have figured out who that person is (unless it’s Mark Zuckerberg). We see the CEOs with their millions, and everyone wants in on the wave of the future, either in an IPO or working for the company behind the social network, or establishing their own.

“But is there really any money to be had? Last week, social networking darling Facebook, still a privately-held and VC-funded enterprise, allegedly leaked its financial projections for the year. The outlook isn’t exactly what you’re hoping for in a company that is supposedly worth $15B..”