When I first signed up for a Facebook page – about 2005, I
did not quite “Grok” Facebook.

Why would a user want to say what they were eating for
breakfast? Better yet, who the hell would be interested?

I didn’t understand the sheep meme. Look at me – I can do
this, you can too.

Which of course is the secret of the success of the various
applications.

We published the top 60
applications the other day. (But don't bother taking any notes – Facebook moves
at a quantum as yet unrealised by normal media analysts. It doesnt move in
years, months, weeks or days. It moves in minutes, seconds and occassionally it
might take a whole hour……).

Notwithstanding it's speed, there is more movement in the
Facebook top 1500 applications than in the Music industries top 40.

And certainly more movement than the Mojo’s Movie
Blockbuster results.

Here’s Box office Mojo’s estimates of opening weekend last
week.

So that equals nine point two million cinema goers.

Let’s compare that to that to the top ten Facebook
applications……

Or
five times more attention than the movies. In fact just the BlackBerry and
iPhone Facebook users exceed the Hollywood
movie attendance numbers.

In
America,
a recording artist is required to sell 500,000 albums or copies of a track for
that music track or album to go “gold”. A million for platinum.

 On
Facebook, an application needs to have an audience of 15,000,000 BEFORE it gets
into the top ten; nine million for the top 20 and 6 million for the top thirty.

 In
fact, if one only had 500,000 eyes on Facebook – you wouldn’t be number one on
the charts….. you would be number 220.

We have blogged about this phenomenon before.

The people – that’s “the consumer” can make or break
something on the internet quicker than big industry, or political parties, or
media publishers.

And it has very little with commercial chest thumping (e.g.:
“I’m
a big Telco – How good am I?”)

Internet users have shown that films that Hollywood
ignore, are in fact (or become) quite valuable assets – when placed on the P2P
Networks.

From our article entitled, The Plus
Side of File Sharing

AND what’s most impressive is our ranking on IMDb went from
being the 11,235th most popular movie, to the 5th most popular movie in 2 weeks
(we are also the #1 independent film on IMDb & the #1 science fiction film
on IMDb). How did this all happen? Two words: Torrent / File Sharing sites

So the billion dollar question that should be on everyone’s
lips is – but isn’t…..

“Koltai – What can we do to jump back onto the gravy train
of attention?”

When companies finally realise that P2P in all it’s forms,
Torrent, Emule, Facebook is the future, then they might start altering their
value propositions and benefiting from “what is” and not what “We bloody well
think it should be this – because we say so.”

Those that keep saying: “If only”:

If only – We had shutdown that horrible Internet before it
started.

If only – The Geeks would show us how to filter
everything…..

If only – We had bought all the ISP’s before they got too
big.

If only – We could could convince all the TRIPS
signatories that ACTA
is a good thing.

If only – Everyone in the world sent 25% of every dollar
they earned to the USA.

Will wind up as useless as a meaningless turd in the desert
of “what could have been, if only:”

The Desert (old media) where even the dung beetles have
moved on to greener more lucrative pastures.

Which by the way – are all on the Internet.

Rupert, here’s a freebie – Cause it’s Monday. Buy Channel
Seven.

Kerry,
Don’t buy Foxtel. TiVo is not a cure all for what ails that lumbering coffin
looking for a burial plot. 

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