Last week at Ad Age’s Digital Conference, an audience poll reveled that attendees believed that Second Life was the most over-hyped digital trend of 2007. The combination of gobs of press, huge advertiser interest and tiny consumer reach and interaction was the winning trifecta for Second Life. One quarter into the 2008, I’m wondering if Facebook applications may not be headed for the same fate. Of course, Facebook itself does not share Second Life’s audience problem—there is a huge and growing number of people who spend tons of time on Facebook every day. The problem is reaching those folks in significant numbers.
Advertising on profile pages is certainly one effective way to do it. At this point, Facebook Applications probably aren’t. Despite a few exceptions such as this, most companies are not generating much user interaction with their applications. In fact, according to one Facebook executive, 98% of the 20,000 plus current applications have fewer than 100 users. That’s not the type of scale that most CPG companies are looking for.
