“There is no evidence that online networking sites are producing anything of real economic value,” said Theresa Wise, global director at Accenture’s digital media practice at a Broadband World Forum session in Paris entitled “The Emergence of Convergent Media” (as quoted by Ken Wieldand in BBWF: Accenture sees little financial value in Web 2.0 for Telecommnications Online).
It is still the Hollywood “big hits” that consumers are willing to pay for, argued Wise, with only a very small percentage of user-generated material being popular. “Big brands do not always lend themselves to social networking websites, as Web 2.0 users aren’t always receptive to them,” she added. “There is no evidence that these sites are monetizeable.”
As for producing measurable statistics, Wise argued that while there was indeed much data available, very few companies made complete use of it.
Traditional economic models assume either that consumers and/or advertisers pay for a service. With online social networking sites, Wise is not convinced that this will happen and, what’s more, there are no alternative workable economic models available to compensate for that fact.
Well, I take issue with Ms. Wise...
dHer guesswork may be applicable to some, perhaps even most corporations, but definitely not all. I can speak from experience that my own personal blog (www.IntranetBlog.com) has delivered significant business and high-profile clients for my company, Prescient Digital Media. While the majority of our business comes from past customers and referrals, the blog is a generator of a significant portion of our new business and first-time clients.
Additionally, Facebook alone has generated two client opportunities for Prescient in the past two weeks.
There are plenty of case studies out there supporting Web 2.0 success stories including blogs, wikis, social networking, etc. The evidence to the contrary an be viewed in case studies on numerous sites including:
• Marketing Sherpa
• IntranetBlog.com
• Ragan.com
• Shel Holtz’s blog
I truly believe that Ms. Wise is entitled to her opinion. Perhaps, based on her experience, there has been little economic value for Accenture and their clients using Web 2.0. I guess like most things in life it’s what you do and how you do it. I’d certainly like to take a closer look at how Accenture and their clients are using Web 2.0 if in fact it’s not working for them.
Sometimes however new initiatives and new technology takes time. I didn’t land any new business in my first year of writing www.IntranetBlog.com. It took some time and I had to build an audience. The same was true for the first few months using Facebook.
As you build a name, a reputation, and your execution improves, Web 2.0 can and has delivered financial returns.
Agree? Disagree? Post your comments below.
