It's scary, but inevitable, that more and more people are talking about the social media / tech bubble. But one central aspect of this trend is the inability of many social offerings to monetize effectively. Most social companies have built their business models and revenues stream around online advertising, which, in turn, is built on attention. But when you trace the traditional marketing funnel onto attention-based online advertising there is a gaping hole.
Attention is an inaccurate indicator of preference or opinion. The funnel assumes awareness can be naturally converted to interest, but the efficacy of this philosophy is decreasing as attention is over-valued as an absolute.
Eyeballs are becoming increasingly dettached from the consumer psyche, meaning much of the value that is driving this industry is based on shaky and steadily weakening economics.
I'm not trying to tear a biggle hole in the bubble, just to bring awareness to this trend and (hopefully) contribute to the conversation that can help push us back to a solid, grounded economic model.