Social Cache.
A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

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Apple always has something up its sleeve…

Er, cough, cough…

Pic: Adweek

Over at Adweek, Brian Morrissey makes a very strong argument that Facebook advertiser applications are finding very few takers. His overview entitled Apps: The Newest Brand Graveyard, lists four brands with Facebook Apps that are struggling to find users – Fed Ex [1,500 users,] Ford [106 users,] Nike [3,400 users,] and Microsoft [8,500 users.]

For anyone who believes that marketing through social media will work for the brand and/or provide a revenue stream for Facebook this article is worth reading. Here’s an extract -

‘Brands, in general, have found Facebook unforgiving terrain for marketing. It’s well known, for instance, that banner ads perform poorly on the site. (A recent IDC report called advertising on social networks “stillborn.”) But the Facebook Platform, launched 18 months ago — which lets developers create social applications for users — was thought to offer the perfect opportunity to move beyond banners to provide “branded utility.” So far, however, Facebook apps from brands like Coca-Cola, Champion, Ford and Microsoft are as popular as desolate Second Life islands.’

Just last month I posted how P&G’s Head of Digital, Ted McConnell isn’t a believer.

AdWeek reports that “Federated Media Publishing, the blog-centric ad network helmed by Industry Standard founder John Battelle, has partnered with Microsoft to launch CrowdFire, a music-themed social media platform where fans can share and consume videos, photos and personal accounts from live concerts.”

Reading the story and then digging through the CrowdFire site I can’t help but feel that this is just yet-another-social-network. The site is clean enough and easy to navigate but seems a bit jargon-heavy as in the use of the word crowdsource. And Battelle comes over as oddly quaint when he says that the idea for CrowdFire was sparked when he attended several recent music festivals, and saw how prominent cell phone cameras and other portable video recording devices have become. That sounds so 2000 to me….