Steve Rubel posts the news that social networks (blogs and other places consumers produce content) are set to be a huge business – $1bn this year and $4.3bn by 2011 says eMarketer. He says this won’t be without its problems:

1. consumers won’t continue to do this for free

2. ad blocking technology will get better and make monitisation harder (the new Camino browser for the Mac has it built in, for instance) will continue to improve, he says.

I agree with 2 but I think the propositions will simply become better and more compelling – we are really in the infancy of effective online brand marketing.

I don’t agree with 1. It seems to me that there is a basic human urge to communicate which has been unleased by the new technology and I don’t think the desire to share the spoils will weigh much against this background.