Last year was the year of social networks, namely Facebook has been its star. With an average yearly growth rate of 550% .

World wide faeebook is closing on myspace #1 lead in social networking arena to equal it to around 100 million unique visits a month. It is in Alexa’s top ten, and it is number one world wide photo sharing website more than flickr.

In the arab world facebook become number on social network beating Hi5. Facebook now is on top 5 most visited websites in the arab world which include: Google, yahoo, msn, and maktoob.

On the business professional SN front, linkedIn and Xing has grown a lot, Linkedin remain a leader with around 17 millions profile, with a growth rate at an average of 182 percent yearly.

Facebook and Bebo charges only 13 cents per thousand times that an ad is ’served,’ or CPM. Yahoo’s average CPM is estimated at $13. Video ads on Myspace is $25 per thousand showings while CBS charges $50 and NBC charges as much as $75 for the same number of views.

Why is consumers Social networking Ad rate is lower, I think because Advertising in consumer social networks is less effective to other web sites.

According to an online marketer in the Arab world who ran ads in faebook, facebook click through rate (CTR) is the lowest in the industry, the obvious reason is that users are busy interacting with their friends than looking into ads, the other reason is that ad location is not visible to the user, they are even on the left side under the app menu or at the bottom of the page.

Another evidence is Google executives complains about how hard it is to monetize social networking traffic.

Fox Interactive gets 27 percent of its revenue from an ad deal between Google and MySpace forged in August 2006. A deal in which Rupert Murdoch gets $900 million, the guaranteed revenue Google promised MySpace through 2010. So now google is loosing money with myspace ad deal.

Contextual text ads to users’ Personal profiles are not as effective as contextual text ads on search or a news website.

On the other hand LinkedIn has a CPM rate of $75. why? LinkedIn caters to a professional business audience and so the advertisers have a narrower business audience.

LinkedIn also has contextual text ads from google’s ad sense, which I found interesting where I some times I click on these links. Because they are related to things in my profile and business interest, some thing I would like to increase my knowledge about.sometimes locate a competitor.

How many times did an ad got your attention and how many times did you click an ad across social networks.

Please leave your comments and tell us about

your ad experience across social networks………………….

UP DATE: there are new reports that backup my assertions, and i will post them soon.

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Google recently has 2 software eng. position open now. In their posting they said they want them to be fluent in Arabic to build new application in Arabic tailored to the Arab world. This move by google signal a huge commitment by google to the Arab world, and soon we will see more services from Google in Arabic and tailored to the Arab world. Google’s current Arabized offerings are: search, blogger, news, and gmail. if you know any more Arabized services by Google please mention them on a comment.
The 2 google’s job posts are:

Google Engineering Site Director (Arabic Fluent) – Middle East Region

Google is looking for a highly technical, hands-on Engineering Site Director to drive software initiatives for the Middle East/Arab World in a location(s) to be determined.
As the most senior engineer for Google in the region, the Engineering Site Director will be the face for Google’s Arabic engineering effort in the Arab World.

The Engineering Site Director will be responsible for the overall planning, execution and success of regionally focused projects (for the Middle East) that will have the potential for global impact. In
addition to leading an initially small engineering team, the Engineering Site Director will work closely with Google’s senior management team as well as local officials and Universities and
professional organizations.

Required:
• Exceptional technical competence and accomplishment with a strong coding track record.
• Software background and deep success developing web-based applications ideally launched in the Arab market.
• Entrepreneurial drive plus demonstrated ability to achieve goals in an innovative environment.
• Relevant experience as hands-on manager of a large fast-paced dynamic engineering team.
• Solid leadership skills and success in building a strong engineering team.
• Strong project-management skills and proven history in product delivery.
• Can fit in well within an informal startup environment and quickly establish credibility with engineers.

Education:
• MS in Computer Science/Computer Engineering or PhD (a plus).
• An exceptionally strong record of academic achievement.

Language:
Arabic language fluency and familiarity with the Middle Eastern technology market.

Please note that engineering management at Google is technical, i.e., candidates are expected to have a strong track record of technical accomplishments in addition to management accomplishments. Consequently a candidate must posses a strong and broad background in most aspects of Computer Science.
Candidates will be asked technical questions during your interviews.

Google / (Arabic Fluent) Experienced Software Engineers – Middle East

The Software Engineering positions require at least 7+ years work experience, experience developing web-based applications, expertise in data structures, algorithms, and complexity analysis, fluency in one or more of C, C++, Java, fluency in one of more of Shell, PHP, Perl or Python, solid working knowledge of Unix, preferably Linux, SQL and MySQL are a plus. Applicants must have BA/BS in Computer Science, MS or PhD.

We are looking for engineers with exceptional programming skills, excellent algorithmic and analytical skills, and a strong aptitude for building high-performance, scalable computer systems. Our recent work encompasses a broad spectrum of computer science research areas, including:Large scale distributed systems design, Information retrieval, Natural language processing, Machine learning and data mining, Algorithms and data structures research and User interface research.