Wolf Tracking

It’s official – figures just released by web analytics outfit comScore have confirmed what we’ve all been discussing for the last few months – mainstream social networks are loosing steam.

You can check out all the stats here at Creative Capital. What you’ll find is that the average length of time users spend on all of the top three sites is on the decline…big-time!

With MySpace, Bebo and Facebook all posting double-digit percentage hits in Q4 2007, where should advertisers be looking?

According to BusinessWeek, niche social networks – particularly those that break a sweat – are where high-caliber advertisers are spending their money.

For instance, US Olympian and ski icon, Bode Miller, recently launched SkiSpace, a social network that snow-riders can join to meet ski buddies, plan weekend trips, and hear first-hand reviews of ski resorts. SkiSpace grew to a community of 10,000 in its first month.

There are countless other niche social networks that are attracting big crowds – and big money from advertisers. By catering to niche markets, these social networks can offer a channel for targeted ads.

BusinessWeek reported that some ski resorts are spending as much as $50,000 for such campaigns, leveraging new media capabilities such as mobile blogging widgets and RSS feeds to interact more directly with members.

Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg will take those pesky billion dollar offers more seriously this year.

In case you haven’t heard, 2007 was the best year yet for the videogame industry, with nearly $18 billion in US sales – 43% better than last year’s total take. Even when less-than-rosy consumer sentiment produced disappointing holiday sales across the board, videogames moved at a steady clip, with nearly $5 billion worth of software and hardware sold in December alone.

While the numbers are certainly impressive, the most interesting part of this story is where that growth came from. While hardcore gamers came out in force to buy Halo3 and Gears of War this year, the Wii dominated sales all year long, and cemented Nintendo’s push for casual gamers as a sure-fire strategy.

Venerable Japanese developer Capcom and even EA recently pledged to investors that adults who would never consider themselves ‘gamers,’ spend only a few hours (or even minutes) playing games each week, and spend little, if any, money on hardware specifically to play games would be their new focus.

This is a particularly exciting trend for the game development community, because lo-fi, casual games are much easier and cheaper to build than a high-end release like this year’s Madden. Scrabulous was developed by a handful of coders in India, and now sees around half a million plays daily via Facebook.

For advertisers, the shift to casual gaming is an even bigger deal. These lower involvement games have plenty of space to insert logos, and bargain development prices mean one brand can “own” a game from very early in the process.

It’ll be interesting to see how casual-only studios answer the call for both casual gamers and serious advertisers. Keep an eye on Dave Jaffe’s Eat, Sleep, Play and Zynga, the latest venture from SupportSoft founder Mark Pincus and a group of top-notch investors, including PayPal superstar Peter Thiel.