Are we so self-obsessed that even our funeral is personal branding?

Written on 16th October 2008                                                                                                              5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Two weeks ago, Dutch blogger Ridzert Beetstra wrote a post about a life insurance company that challenged all Dutchmen to “pimp” their funeral. After expressing his amazement, he ended the post by mentioning the song he wanted to hear on his funeral. What followed, were ten comments from people saying which song would be the soundtrack of their lives. I was one of them.

When I posted my request to family and friends, it didn’t seem then weird. But when I later thought about it, telling the world how the tunes during my farewell day will sound struck me as kind of odd. Particularly in the sense that I couldn’t imagine myself sharing something like that a few years ago.

Act normal, then you act crazy enough

The baby boomers and Generation X were raised to be modest people. Like the Dutch saying goes: “act normal, then you act crazy enough”. Sure, most western societies were pretty focused on the individual compared to most Asian cultures, yet self-expression was something that wasn’t considered to be decent. Adolescents formed groups and wore certain clothes or hairstyles to distinguish themselves, but that’s about it.

Every kid a brand

But my generation grew up with Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks. Every single soul on the face of the planet could start its own brand by creating a page on one of these services. Choose your pictures, make sure you fill in the right favorite movies and books, collect as many friends as possible: every kid starts his or hers own brand.

Funeral great outlet for personal branding

When I see ten young men telling the world about their funeral song, I can’t help but thinking that we’ve become so focused on personal branding that even our burial or cremation forms a great outlet for it. I also recognize this in the marketing message of Richard Derks, co-founder of Respectance.com (a social network for the deceased):

Who dies in two years and doesn’t have a Tribute on Respectance.com, didn’t have a lot of friends

On L1veon1ine, users can, amongst other things, tag themselves to create a “digital” DNA, which floats in cyberspace forever. Gary Vanyerchuk told the Web 2.0 Expo New York audience that his biggest motivation was his online legacy, so that even his great grand children could see what he has done. Mashable’s Stan Schroeder gives four ways to deal with the Google Afterlife. You can also take the online material offline and publish it on your digital tombstone.

Taboo

Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe personal branding gave us an outlet to tell people something that used to be taboo: “yeah, I can finally share which song defines me”. However, I think it’s an interesting discussion. Did the focus on personal branding took away some of our social barriers?

The soundtrack of your life

To end this article, I’ve made a soundtrack of the funeral wishlist as posted on the Dutch blog. It might inspire you when writing your funeral scenario. Don’t forget to share your choice on Facebook.

death, digital tombstone, eternity, facebook, friendster, funeral, mashable, myspace, personal branding, Respectance.com, richard derks, Ridzert Beetstra, stan schroeder

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Friendster’s rollercoaster ride just passed a booster of $20 million

Written on 5th August 2008                                                                                                              0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Remember Rollercoaster Tycoon? The addictive game turned you into a theme park manager and rollercoaster designer. Although I enjoyed the managing aspect, the building possibilities really did it for me. One of the options during the construction of a rollercoaster were the boosters, which helped the trains gain some speed.

Social network Friendster is often called a “rollercoaster failure“. It was one of the first popular networks, attracted millions of users, and reached its peak in 2003 – Google then almost bought it for $30 million. Due to scalability problems, MySpace and Facebook took over the Western market. The rollercoaster went down pretty fast.

Yet the next steep was already in sight, as Friendster became the no. 1 service in several South Asian countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore.

Earlier today, Friendster passed two boosters, which make the social network an important player again. The company closed a $20 million investment round, led by IDG Ventures with existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Founders Fund. Moreover, the San Francisco-based company welcomed a new CEO, Richard Kimber, the regional managing director of South Asia for Google.

So while Facebook and MySpace have their ball in the west, Friendster now has the money and the right guy to firm their good position in South Asia. That’s one hell of a rollercoaster ride…

facebook, friendster, google, myspace, richard kimber, social networks, south asia

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Cubics serves tons of ads across social networks, no word on actual return

Written on 23rd July 2008                                                                                                              6 COMMENTS
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer

Cubics was the one of the first advertising networks designed specifically for social networks, and currently boasts support for most major social networks including Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo and others. The company prides itself on displaying highly targeted ads, based upon detailed demographic, interest, and behavioral data, a strategy that led to its acquisition by online targeted advertising house Adknowledge in December of last year.

Cubics sent out a press release today about the fact that they now apparently serve more than 10 billion ad impressions per month on social networks (hat tip to MarketingVox). The company claims this number far exceeds those of Social Media, citing a volume five times as large. The release also correctly states that more and more time is spent on social networks, and that the engagement of people with social applications is very high.

While this may be true, social networking sites are notoriously hard to monetize, and the company remains dead silent on the actual return the ads they serve yield for their customers. For reference, TechCrunch yesterday wrote about Lookery lowering its guarantee on Facebook ads to a mere 7.5-cent CPM.

It’s unfortunate that Cubics didn’t talk about their current numbers, challenges and opportunities. We could have a learned a lot more than the fact that they serve billions of ad impressions on social networks that everyone else says rarely get noticed or clicked on.

Update: Cubics’s general manager and PR manager responded in the comments with some context, so scroll down for their perspective.

adknowledge, bebo, cubics, faceobok, friendster, myspace, social networking monetization, social networks, targeted ads

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