“AOL to Buy Bebo” or “Hope You Like Ads”
I’m sure you’ve heard the news that AOL has entered into an agreement to acquire leading global social media network Bebo for $850 million. Let’s all point at and call out the elephant in the room: obviously this is nothing more than an acquirement of space to advertise and pollute with commercials.
Much like Murdoch’s consuming of MySpace, now AOL eats Bebo. eMarketer predicts that by 2011, $4.1 billion will be spent worldwide for social network advertising – a dramatic increase from the $480 million spent in 2006.
The blatant and most-ignored fact is that kids don’t want to be pitched to. Just because 40 million people are a part of the party, doesn’t mean they all want to hear the forced-upon guest speakers or read the names of people who donated in the brochure.
I have no problem with companies buying social networks… Capitalism is the country’s 
base. But, I do have a problem when the purchase is solely motivated by advertising space, while blatantly ignoring the reality and mindset of the established members you plan on selling your message to.
People do take notice when a sports team’s home field is renamed for a corporation. People do notice when you force them to watch commercials at the movie they paid $10 to see. People do notice when a friend sends them a link to a video, and you have to wait through a 30-second ad for something you will never buy.
TiVo was invented for a reason – but became popular for another. Don’t think for a second that we won’t eventually find a way to tune out, skip or get around your forced advertising.
HAH!
OK, this has nothing to do with Internet safety. File it under “You know what really grinds my gears…” Or you could help prevent your child from falling victim to the mind numbing advertising that many folks are so eager to berate them with.
p.s. If you had PC Pandora 5.0, you could monitor the effects and correlation of where they are going and how they are acting…
Oh yeah, and…
