SOCIAL NOTWORKING

As a managing director for Morgan Stanley, Mary Meeker is the firm's global lead for the technology research unit. In 1995, she co-authored an industry report "The Internet Report" which would become a landmark during the internet boom era.

In her most recent presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, "Ten Questions Internet Execs Should Ask & Answer" , you can find the chart that follows. It represents share of online display units along with corresponding CPM rates.

Click on the graph to enlarge

The report should be unnerving for the likes of Social Networks and especially Facebook. At the same Summit, Mark Zuckerberg brushed off advertising as "it's not necessarily about advertising".

Insanity?

It certainly isn't about advertising when faced with a dismal display rate. It also illustrates how weak the site is when it comes to ROI. With the exception of a few mega-efforts by major marketers (supported by even larger TV budgets), Facebook falls flat on its own face.

And it is becoming a potential detriment to sustaining business models supported by advertising.

FACEBOOK - LIKE AN OIL SPILL

It starts with a small drip, drip, drip....

Unchecked and unregulated it can grow to become a looming disaster affecting all aspects of personal and private information. Like the leaking oil in our gulf it will have lasting impact on individual "environments".

When Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook suggests to his employees that there is no such thing as privacy and when Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google insists that privacy should not be an issue if you have nothing to hide, it's time to worry.

Be very, very worried.

The infographs that follow trace the "privacy spill" perpetuated by Facebook in five short years. They tell the story better than I can in this short blog post.

Click on the graphs to enlarge.

A shout out and thanks to a reader (Yen) for passing this along.