Communications Technology

FACEBOOK and MySpace are responsible for a large chunk of web ads, according to a new report.

The report by analytics firm comScore claims one of every five internet display ads in the US is viewed on a social networking website, according to a new report.

It illustrates the increasing competition between social media sites and established internet companies like Yahoo and Time Warner’s AOL which have long billed themselves as the top online destinations for brand advertisers.

This week’s comScore study said social media sites represented 21.1 per cent of US internet display ads in July, with MySpace and Facebook accounting for more than 80 per cent of those ads.

“Because the top social media sites can deliver high reach and frequency against target segments at a low cost, it appears that some advertisers are eager to use social networking sites as a new advertising delivery vehicle,” said Jeff Hackett, senior vice president of comScore.

According to comScore, AT&T, Experian Interactive and IAC/Interactive Corp’s Ask Network were the top three advertisers on social networking sites in July.

While social media sites have enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years - Facebook is now the world’s fourth-most visited website - some observers have questioned whether the sites can be effectively monetised.

Because the content on social media sites is created by users, and could therefore prove racy or offensive, some have questioned the willingness of marketers to place their brands alongside that content.

“(Advertisers) are sensitive to some extent, but nowhere near to the extent you might think,” said Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeff Lindsay.

The price of placing ads on social networking sites is significantly less than on a web portal like Yahoo or AOL, Mr Lindsay said.

The vast amount of web pages available on social networks means that advertisers can purchase a massive volume of ad impressions at bargain prices.

The strategy may not be ideally suited to smaller marketers, or advertisers seeking a direct response from their ads, Mr Lindsay said.

“For big, national brands it works just fine, just like TV,” Mr Lindsay said.

“It’s a huge, huge volume game.”

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A HACKER attack shut down Twitter overnight, and Facebook and LiveJournal were also “looking into” possible site problems.

A post on the Twitter blog by co-founder Biz Stone said that Twitter was the victim of a denial of service attack, a technique in which hackers overwhelm a website’s servers with communications requests.

“We are defending against this attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate,” read the posting.

Facebook was also experiencing problems.

Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker said the company was looking into it and would have an update “as soon as possible”.

The Twitter outage began at about 9am, according to Ken Godskind, chief strategy officer at web performance monitoring company AlertSite.

The site still had access problems a few hours later.

LiveJournal was also hit with the DDoS attack, PC Mag reports.

“The company cannot 100 per cent confirm that it is the same attack that plagued Twitter this morning, but “it would be a huge coincidence if they aren’t tied to one another,” a spokesman said.
Things are now back to normal on LiveJournal.com, he said.

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AS if your Facebook friends list didn’t make you feel lonely enough, now you’re bombarded with Twitter mates who seem to have racked up 10,000 followers before you’ve worked out what a hash tag is for.

There’s no need to panic - there’s nothing wrong with you. Those that matter really do care about your commute.

Just rest easy in the knowledge that all the others are buying their friends.

Yes, just as it was with other social networking sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg, web traffic and promotion company uSocial.net says it has had a “massive response” to offering Twitter users “follower packages” if they are having trouble attaining them on their own.

The packages are aimed at businesses and start with 1000 followers ($US87) and range up to 100,000 ($US3479).

From a business point of view, uSocial.net claims each follower is worth “about 10c” to a business.

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