Great post and thanks for the link.

Facebook is an interesting example. A huge amount of people are using it and finding real value in it. 225 million active users would make it the world’s fifth biggest country. So it’s not overhyped in that sense. However what was overhyped was the potential for applications, and brands did rush in and create substanceless applications that predictably failed before abandoning the platform and forgetting about it. The reality is the application platform is still viable, but because of the initial rush and disappointment most marketers have moved on and have lost interest.

Twitter is again an interesting one. I did a comparison recently between buzz and traffic for Twitter vs Myspace vs Facebook and found Twitter’s buzz far out of proportion with its actual usage, which may indicate a bubble: http://bit.ly/mdobw. Hard to say if the usage will eventually catch up with the buzz, or if the disillusionment will kick in before that happens.

I guess the big question is whether the social platforms have matured and established themselves to the point where Facebook can continue to keep it’s audience base, or whether it will eventually fall to the same audience migration fate as Geocities, Friendster, 6degrees, and the many social networks that came before it. As you say, has Facebook evolved past the boom-bust cycle and is now set to thrive in the latter stages of Gartner’s model, or are there still a few busts to come?

Second Life may come back, or be replaced by something else, but the key point is nearly a majority of kids are already using virtual worlds. Habbo Hotel has over a hundred million users. Virtual worlds are big and important now, marketers were just focused on the wrong one.

As for interactive TV, have you seen the partnership between Yahoo!, Samsung and Intel? And Xbox Live just announced Twitter and Facebook integration at E3. It’s all happening…

Best,
Geoff