(Number provided by the NMA Magazine, issue 20.03.2008).
It seems that the ever-growing social network Facebook has seen a slight decrease of interest in the first quarter of 2008, at least that is was statistics reveal: from December 2007 to February 2008, Facebook has experienced a fall from 8.9 million unique users to 8.3 million in the UK, that’s a considerable drop of 600,000 users in just 3 months!

Other popular social networks such as Myspace aren’t doing well either. Claiming to be the World’s largest social network, Myspace, with 110 million users, has been experiencing a downslope trends, with only 5 million unique users in February 2008 for the UK.

On the other hand, Bebo (bought by AOL last week for £417 million) is on the rise, jumping 13% to 4.6 million. Some say the “dramatic rise” of Facebook, which was once planned to be the social getaway to the web, is now over.

Over these still quite recent numbers, one is to wonder why such a popular social network would suddenly lose popularity – Is it because of the fuss that is being made around the portal, the advertising and privacy issues Mark Zuckerberg has experienced or even the ever-growing complexity of the actual Facebook interface? The Facebook people should perhaps start to re-assess their marketing goals in an attempt to reverse the alarming statistics they are getting for this new year – or it might just be the beginning of the end for Facebook. Question is, who will be the next online Giant?

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Paramount Pictures is to become the first major studio to make clips from thousands of its movies available for use on the Internet.

The unit of Viacom Inc. is teaming with Los Angeles-based developer FanRocket to launch the VooZoo application Monday on Facebook.

The service will grant Facebook users access to footage from thousands of movies, ranging from “The Ten Commandments” to “Forrest Gump,” Enabling users to send their favorite clips to each other accross the social network.

“The short clips for a movie that you’ve already seen before helps you relive the moment,” Paramount senior vice president of entertainment Derek Broes said.

The clips last from a few seconds to several minutes and cover the gamut from Eddie Murphy’s guffaw in “Beverly Hills Cop” to Audrey Hepburn’s pleas over her “no-name slob” cat in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

The studio will market DVDs of the movies through a button that appears after each clip is played. It eventually wants to use the application to virally market upcoming releases.

For example, VooZoo is withholding clips from the “Indiana Jones” series until it works out a way to market the May 22 release of the latest installment, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

Paramount said it has not set revenue goals for the new venture.

“My benchmark for success is that people are joining and sending,” Broes said.

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On the Net:

VooZoo: http://apps.facebook.com/voo-zoo