trends | Media Culpa

Has traffic to Pinterest plateaued?

There has been an incredible hype over Pinterest during the last six months or so, to the extent that many claim it is a must for business marketers. While I have no problem in seeing benefits with the site, a word of caution might be in place. The site grew extremely fast for some time, but will this growth continue or will users leave the network once they tried it a few times?

I don’t know, but take a look at the three graphs below. Although there is reason to be careful with reading too much into this statistics, it sure does look like traffic to Pinterest has stopped growing as fast as it did in early 2012, or even stopped growing at all. What do you think, are you using Pinterest as much as you did six months ago?

DoubleClick Ad Planner:

Google Trends:

Alexa.com

10 disturbing trends in mass media

Peter R. Kann, Chairman of Dow Jones, lists ten disturbing trends in mass media. From Wall Street Journal (subscr. req.) via Robert:

1. The blurring of the lines between journalism and entertainment.
2. The blurring of lines between news and opinion.
3. The blending of news and advertising, sponsorships or other commercial relationships.
4. The problems and pitfalls inherent in pack journalism.
5. The issue of conflict and context.
6. The exaggerated tendency toward pessimism.
7. The growing media fascination with the bizarre, the perverse and the pathological — John Mark Karr journalism.
8. Social orthodoxy, or political correctness.
9. The media’s short attention span.
10. The matter of [the media’s] power.

Advertising trends in 2005

Yesterday I wrote about predictions for web design in 2005. Now Pete Blackshaw at ClickZ has some predictions for buzz-driven marketing and advertising in 2005:

> Blogs absorb flak, yet stay on track.

> “I’ll watch the ads… for a price!”

> All media become product-placement vehicles.

> Wireless goes free (brought to you by Unilever).

> There’ll be more integrated-branding misfires.

> We’ll see a backlash to “sight, sound, and motion.”

On the last point above, Blackshaw concludes: Don’t be surprised if you start to see advertising that says something like, “This moment of silence is brought to you by (your brand here).”