Boo-hoo.

Social networking’s second boom—in the form of advertising frenzy—could go bust. That’s because of said frenzy backfiring, the research firm Comscore reported. We hate to say it, but we told you so.

First, a little background: The year 2007 marked the resurgence of social networks as the “it” thing in communications technology. Since their proliferation earlier this decade, social sites had proved their appeal to consumers of all ages. Even the college-centric Facebook became open to everyone. Time came for network purveyors and marketers to leverage this appeal—with “behaviorally-targeted” ads, which use software to track a Web-surfer’s actions and then serve up advertisements based on those actions.

Behaviorally targeted advertising became one of the biggest buzzwords for digital marketers in 2007. They dreamed that all their adverts would be eagerly received by Internet users since the ads would tout things in which the users seemed to be interested. And since the basis of social networks is “friends”— whether real life or cyberspace buddies—marketers thought they could enjoy more conversions by sharing users’ purchases with the acquaintances who appear on their profile pages.

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