A great article on Venture Beat by slide.com founder Keith Rabois provides yet more ammunition for anyone (like myself) who thinks that branded applications are by and large a waste of time and money.
"Consider this: Verizon, Blockbuster, Nike and the New York Times (all marquee brands) have launched their own custom apps on Facebook. Their combined active userbase (see chart) is just shy of 10,000. So if you were to turn all four into a single application, it wouldn't even rank in the top thousand apps on the site."
Another stat: Coke's Sprite Sips, something that's been lauded in the past as a great example of brand social media engagement, has a grand total of 45 active monthly users. You wonder what the $/£ cost per user is in situations like that.
Related - According to the New York Times, advertising on a blog will get you a better return than getting in members faces on networks like Facebook. 25% trust blog ads, 19% trust Facebook ads.
Related articles by Zemanta- Slide to distribute videos through Facebook
- The plight of branded ads and the future of social marketing
- Widget makers get a makeover
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