Happy holidays from all your virtual digital friends

Greg Grimmer, partner, Hurrell Moseley Dawson & Grimmer: “Wasn’t the internet supposed to encourage freedom, proliferation of brands and consumer choice? The actuality is that it is dominated by a hegemony of super brands – Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon – the web is increasingly offering consumers a parsimonious choice of suppliers”…

As we approach the end of another hard year in advertising, I noted how many people listed Stephen Haines of Facebook as a mate in Campaign‘s recent A List book. Taking a leaf out of his boss’ book (Mark Zuckerberg) the aforementioned Haines has become very popular, and I know from our friendly chats, it has been hard work for him as well!

Reading MediaTel Newsline last week I saw yet another piece of hardworking research from GfK, looking into the ‘unexplained’ success of Facebook. There appeared to be some surprise that there is a key youth market that actively interacts with the website as well as the smartphone app!

So ‘have we really had enough of social networking?’ the article asked… What! The biggest global phenomenon since Google and the world is already telling us it is all over. To be fair, the piece concluded that the time when we have had enough of social networking will only arrive when ‘the next big thing’ comes along.

In fact, this coincides with some work I did previously… many thousands of moons ago in the digital world (about 2006), I used to have a theory about social networking sites. This theory was that they had a half-life, a bit like a piece of radioactive waste. The theory stood up quite well for a season of conference speeches, as Friends Reunited, Bebo, Second Life (I like to think my ‘get yourself a first life’ comment helped this particular site’s demise) and even the mighty MySpace lost favour with their previously fanatical users.

Then along came Facebook, and I needed another theory (or a longer time span to judge it by).

However, as The Social Network was going big and hitting Hollywood, the latest piece of mass owned technology (geo-tagging on smart phones) was spawning a number of threats to Facebook. Gowalla, Rummble, Foursquare and numerous other location based services have been gaining traction by getting users to ‘check in’ their location via their smart phones in order to let their friends, fans or mere digital acquaintances know their whereabouts.

Briefly, Foursquare has been the digerati’s new favourite social app. I was staggered to hear that over 4,500 people earned an ‘Epic Swarm’ badge by checking in simultaneously at a recent American Football game, until I realised that it was a 49-er’s game in San Francisco down the road from Silicon Valley and smart phone penetration was probably about 200% – therefore the market usage figure for Foursquare was disappointingly low!

Then in August this year Facebook Places was launched.

So, has Facebook Places killed Foursquare overnight? Well no. Before starting my new agency HMDG, I ran a media company full of bright young things who had already binned Facebook as it was too mass, and not cool (or geeky) enough for their liking . No doubt this lot will be part of the five million current users of Foursquare and will, for the time being, carry on gathering mayorships and earning badges.

The problem for Foursquare is (and don’t feel too sorry for the founders who took out $4.6 million in the last round of funding) that the launch of Facebook Places will not only will stymie their consumer growth plans as Facebook Places is automatically added to Facebook profiles, its companion service Facebook Deals also drives a sledgehammer through their commercial aspirations. Facebook has spent the last five years getting brands (via forward thinking agencies like ours) to set up pages and fan bases. These communities can now be carefully harvested and the investment payback started through offering Facebook Deals to those checking in.

So is this the future for new brands on the web?  Launch, wait for one of the big boys to copy your best bits and deliver it seamlessly to their larger audience base, then quietly drift into the ethersphere and a become a distant memory? It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Wasn’t the internet supposed to encourage freedom, proliferation of brands and consumer choice?  The actuality is that it is dominated by a hegemony of super brands – Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon… the web is increasingly offering consumers a parsimonious choice of suppliers.

Forget Chris Anderson’s long tail… consumer herd mentality has meant that the internet is like a docked Weimaraner – nothing wagging here except tongues in Mountain View.

Talking of Google, the latest news out of Facebook launching a message service perhaps is even more interesting than its launch of Places. If Google’s failed social network Buzz was a shot across Facebook’s bow then the announcement this week of an email service for all 500 million Facebook account holders is a broadside against the Big G.

Those that have seen recent user stats from the US will have seen Facebook overtake Google in terms of time spent with each brand – the addition of Places, Deals and Messages will have ramifications in even the most powerful board rooms of the West Coast.

I’ll save my other predictions for January but one I will give you to ruminate over the holidays is that Larry asks Sergey for a Zuck voodoo doll for Hanukkah.