Liveblogging Facebook Advertising Announcement (Social Ads + Beacon + Insights)
Erick Schonfeld
103 comments »
I am at Facebook’s social advertising announcement in New York City, where Mark Zuckerberg is about to take the stage and tell us all what we already think we know: Facebook is getting into the advertising business in a big way. Much of what will be announced today, such as projects code-named Beacon and Pandemic have already leaked out. We’ll see how much of that leaked information was correct, and what more there is to add. Facebook is certainly pulling out all the stops with this announcement, on the agenda later on is a panel with Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson and Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes that will be moderated by Charlie Rose (who charges a lot to do these things, or so I hear).
Facebook is announcing three things: Social Ads (ads targeted based on member profile data and spread virally), Beacon (a way for Facebook members to declare themselves fans of a brand on other sites and send those endorsements to their feeds), and Insight (marketing data that goes deep into social demographics and pyschographics which Facebook will provide to advertisers in an aggregated, anonymous way). These three things together make up Facebook Ads. Here are the press releases for Facebook Ads, Project Beacon, and its launch partners.
Zuckerberg just took the stage (keep in mind that he is addressing advertising executives and press in the audience). The following notes are in reverse-chronological order:
A few extra tidbits from press conference with Zuckerberg afterwards:
Q: “Are you worried this will make Facebok too commercial?”
Z: “Actually I think this will make it less commercial because the ads now are [more generic].”
Big point: Microsoft won’t be serving Social Ads. This will be controlled by Facebook. Zuckerberg clarifies: “Microsoft is the exclusive third-party provider of IAB standard ads. This is not going to go through Microsoft. We think it is a different kind of advertising.”
“The pricing mechanism will be completely auction-based. People can either bid for a CPC or a CPM.” You will also be able to buy non-social ads through this system as well, which should be turned on by tomorrow at this link.
People will not be able to opt out of these social ads or turn them off, at least for now, unless they stop revealing information about themselves on Facebook. Says Zuckerberg: “It is an ad-supported service. It is a free service.”
Zuckerberg doesn’t think he is competing with Google ads so much as offering a better way to create brand advertising online. Social Ads are not so much about buying a digital camera right now because you are in the middle of your shopping research. They are about planting suggestions for things you may want but do not even know that you want. That is what brand advertising is, and it represents the majority of ad dollars spent today offline.
My thoughts: This could be huge if done right, but it could also backfire badly for Facebook. If I start to think that my friends are advertising to me, I may no longer trust them (and, in fact, try to avoid them . .. by not logging into Facebook anymore). So the the trick is to make these appear to be genuine recommendations, and not ads. I am not sure how many people will be fooled by this, though. It risks turning something useful—the feed of my friends’ activities—into something spammy.
Zuckerberg Presentation
3:06 PM: “Everything you have seen here is launching tonight.” Launching with 40 partners [press release says 60] (including Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, The Coca-Cola Company, The New York Times, Sony Pictures, Verizon, Dove, and Zazzle). “This is something we have been working on for a long time. It is really good to share it with you guys.” [Zuckerberg walks off stage]
3:03: Insights. Aggregates profile data. “We look at the people your ads are reaching and break it down by age, gender, interests, and a whole lot more we are adding soon.” Says none of this will be personally identifiable. “We will be able to track how much people are talking about your brand in public forums across facebook. As you run ads on Facebook you will be able to see the exact mind share you are getting.”
2:57 PM: “Social Actions + Content = Social Ads.” They spread your message virally through the social graph. these ads will appear both in people’s feeds and as a personalized banner ad.
“Let’s talk about targeting. With Facebook you will be able to select exactly the audience you want to reach, and we will only show your ads to them. We know exactly what gender someone is, what activities they are interested in. their location, country, city or town, interests, gender,” work history, political views [Like what they've already done with Facebook Flyers].
2:52 PM: “Social distribution, now here is where it gets interesting. When somebody engages with your page, that is spread virally through the network. When someone says they are a fan of your brand, that becomes a trusted referral. It goes right to their Mini feed. A strong trusted referral for your brand. You will be able to craft the types of social actions you want to spread across the social graph.”
“We have created a product called Beacon that let’s you do this. Beacon will let users send information to their page, we confirm it, and share it on Facebook. One partner is eBay.” Can share listings from eBay on Facebook. So usres can share social actions from other websites and share them on Facebook. “This will be completely free.”
2:48: “the next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today. As marketers pushing our information out is no longer enough. We are announcing anew advertising system, not about broadcasting messages, about getting into the conversations between people. 3 pieces: build pages for advertisers, a new kind of ad system to spread the messages virally, and gain insights.”
Advertisers can build their own Facebook pages and design them any way they like: “We have photos, videos, discussion boards, any Flash content you want to bring to your page, plus any application a third party developer has made.”
2:46 PM: Messages spread virally. All you need to do is get your friends to engage with it and add it to their profiles. Gives example of how causes are spread across Facebook. Support Breast Cancer, more than 2 million members.
2:44 PM: Zuckerberg is explaining the social graph. “Where Facebook really excels is in helping you keep up with all of your connections at the same time. It is making the cost of communication so low that information can be pushed out more efficiently than it ever could from a few big companies.”
2:43 PM: Z: “More than 80 applications have more than one millions users.”
2:37 PM EST: Zuckerberg: “Once every hundred years media changes. the last hundred years have been defined by the mass media. The way to advertise was to get into the mass media and push out your content. That was the last hundred years. In the next hundred years information won’t be just pushed out to people, it will be shared among the millions of connections people have. Advertising will change. You will need to get into these connections.
“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than are recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.
“Have already passed 50 million users, doubling once every 6 months. only active users who have used facebook last 30 days. More than 25 million people are using Facebook every single day. Each person is viewing more than 40 pages a day, more than 65 billion page views a month.”
Notes:
Beacon Partners (Facebook advertising buttons that exist on other sites and when clicked are reflected in members’ feeds as a brand endorsements—how many of these brands would you bother to explicitly endorse to your Facebook friends, opr even identify with?):
eBay
Fandango
IAC brands (CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, iWon, Citysearch, Pronto.com, echomusic)
Travelocity
AllPosters.com
Blockbuster
Bluefly.com
CBS Interactive (CBSSports.com & Dotspotter)
ExpoTV
Gamefly
Hotwire
Joost
Kiva,
Kongregate
LiveJournal
Live Nation
Mercantila
National Basketball Association
NYTimes.com
Overstock.com
(RED)
Redlight
SeamlessWeb,
Sony Online Entertainment
Sony Pictures
STA Travel
The Knot
TripAdvisor
Travel Ticker
TypePad
viagogo
Vox
Yelp
WeddingChannel.com
Zappos.com.
Few spelling errors, but looking forward to it.
get on stickam or justin.tv and imbed it here.
Oh wow what should we expect? I know this will be a hype though.
Great stuff … I’ll be giving analysis of this over on my post:
http://www.allfacebook.com/200.....ouncement/
Thanks for covering this guys! Apparently you guys were among a small group of journalists. I’m jealous.
For coverage, and why this announcement matters, there’s details here.
We also compare it to MySpace’s Micro-Targetting announcement
Rise of the Fan-Sumer
http://www.web-strategist.com/.....to-brands/
Wow, an actual facebook entry worth reading. I’m getting excited now
Seriously …. you would think in Manhattan Erick’s connection would be better
“I am Facebook’s social advertising announcement in New York City, where Mark Zuckerberg is aboutto take teh”
“Mark Zuckerberg is aboutto take teh stage”
l33tspeaking poserizm right then and there
“OMG, ZOMG, Mark is such a hottie, I just wanna jump in his mone….. I mean pants”
There, I saved that one poster that ALWAYS posts this crap the trouble this time.
Get that stuff the hell outta here. :/
Nice to meet you. I am Facebook’s social user person. Greetings.
“Nice to meet you. I am Facebook’s social user person. Greetings.”
It’s l33tspeak foo.
Erick,
Have you heard or seen anything about Facebook Music yet?
Thanks,
Ed
Is it just me or are there others that can’t stand the hype surrounding young entrepreneurs like Mark Z like he is some kind of visionary business legend? For god sake, I have underwear older than him, sheesh. As far as I am concerned, he was in the right place at the right time, business visionary he is not.
“2:37 PM EST: Zuckerberg: “Once every hundred years media changes. the last hundred years have been defined by the mass media.”
Dude, you copied friendster like myspace did and made it for college kids.
Do you really think you’re that revolutionary?
Somebody’s head has gotten awfully big.
Visionaries: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs
Lucky-ass pimple-face punks: Mark Z., Larry, Sergey
It’s hard to fault a 23yr old billionaire. My head’s pretty big and I’m broke. Beacon sounds like crap though. Someone need to explain this whole social graph thing to Mark.
“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than are recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.”
It’s ‘trusted’ because it’s NOT advertising.
Hey I guess that it’s more social sites for us
That way, we can get more traffic to our website
I hope that it’s something good…
@18:
No, it’s the other way around. When it’s trusted people don’t call it advertising.
Awesome report, but underwhelming message by Fbook. Well, maybe the goods will be in the implementation. But this definitely furthers that FB is AOL Meme.
@16
visionaries are the ones with grand plans for the future - thats Mark, Larry, Sergey and a few more but those three get all the press.
Bill and Steve are more like icons (their visions become reality) then visionaries right now.
“Lucky-ass pimple-face punks: Mark Z., Larry, Sergey”
Larry and Sergey are anything but punks. I strongly disagree. Do some research.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg modified existing software and cloned school registries. Brin and Page created new software for organizing the internet in a meaningful way. Read some of their papers from Stanford. They’re for real.
“Steve are more like icons”
http://www.amazon.com/iCon-Ste.....0471720836
More like a punk.
@20:
Maybe if they don’t know it’s advertising.
@22, I heartily disagree. Did you know that Larry and Sergey initially pushed hard to get their technology sold to companies like Yahoo (who rejected them). They didn’t build Google into what it is now, that credit goes to Schmidt, the CEO, don’t confuse the two. Likewise, I am sure Mark is the designated spokesperson for FB. Making him out to be some kind of visionary is like making out an actor of a movie to be visionary, NOT!
This all sounds a lot like what had been leaked.
Great coverage guys! This is really big news and not some fluff or pr stunt like OpenSocial.
It will be interesting to see how the ad pages will incorporate applications. that could very interesting and possibly provide a revenue model for app owners?
The bottom line is this brings to the surface new ways in which advertisiers can engage and get their brands into people lives.
We will be providing more analysis this evening when these ad platform changes go live.
Cheers!
Rodney Rumford
Editor: http://www.facereviews.com
We at SocialMedia applaud the innovations Facebook is making on social advertising, some key threads of which we have been experimenting with at length with in our own social advertising network (via Appsaholic) on Facebook itself.
Social advertising is the next generation of advertising, going well beyond display, contextual and behavioral targeting. We and many other companies will be innovating on social advertising in a wide variety of ways following the key principle “Nothing influences people more than are recommendation from a trusted friend.”
We are at the very beginning of this new wave of innovation, and look forward to the exciting times ahead for consumers, advertisers and publishers of social applications both on and off social networks.
jerry yang should be upset, zuck is moving exactly into the market position that yahoo likes to maintain - close relationships with strong ad partners. google has gone the mass market route and doesn’t move as strongly in the direction of catering to a few large partners…this has always been yahoo’s thing.
if zuck has the partners he claims for real, yahoo shareholders should be very concerned
“We will be able to track how much people are talking about your brand in public forums across facebook. As you run ads on Facebook you will be able to see the exact mind share you are getting.”
Soooo…!!!
This is a BIGBROTHERbook.com after all !
f.. you Mark Zuckerberg !
P.S. Should be tested on rabbits first, not on students, they may be too smart.
Impressive stuff. I used to think Facebook was overvalued, but sounds like this Zuckerberg guy is the next Steve Jobs.
Allowing people to become “fans” of a brand within Facebook is a good idea (ex. HotLists). The Beacon concept is also a good one for cases where I want to share activities with friends (ex. I just wrote a review on Amazon). However, I don’t see the value for the consumer in allowing those brands to control the message that is sent to their friends through ads in the news feed or on profile pages. As a Facebook user, if I want to share a favorite brand with friends, I’ll send them a link, a video, or an invitation to the brand’s app. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see the incentive for consumers to give up control of the message by allowing these brands to display ads on their behalf.
This might work for the brands that people trust entirely or are insanely passionate about, but there aren’t many of those brands out there and most of them don’t need to advertise as much anyway.
“This is a BIGBROTHERbook.com after all !”
Um, I bet you use AIM or MSN right?
Do you know that your neighbour can simply get on your cable network and sniff your packets? They can read all your IM conversations. Both protocols are bytestreams in plain text.
Anything you send on a commercial network can be read or filtered. 95% of internet communications are unencrypted by design. Tracking cookies across multiple sites via javascript like Doubleclick is the lightest form of invasion.
Tracking across the same site is even less so.
“facebook social SPYWARE needs to stop” Group:
http://vt.facebook.com/group.p.....amp;ref=mf
As a Facebook subscriber what is my revised role and where do I get paid in the monetization scheme? Has my motivation changed for my music reviews?
I want in
Peace,
Ed
Chris,
1. NONE OF THE ABOVE !
2. Don’t mix cookies with blatant, concious and intentional COLLECTION OF INFORMATION ABOUT… how did he put it?… ‘mind share’.
P.S. Don’t teach me how everything can be hacked, I know it better than you can imagine, I work AGAINST those people for more than a decade, many of them are in jail already.
Zuckerberg has to talk about “mindshare” because it’s one of those ethereal terms which replaces the word “results”. The fact is, advertising on SOCNETS does not work. I know, I’ve tried it. This is especially so with the savvy college student demo. They are far too smart to be fooled into becoming the unwitting pawns in this new marketing scheme which asks them, in essence, to become unpaid marketers for a particular brand. I fail to see what motivation anyone would have to share the fact that they just bought a Coke at the convenience store. Yippie!!!
Facebook’s biggest problem may in fact be success. What IF the user base actually broadcasts their brand loyalties and the news feed becomes nothing more than a ticker for Madison Avenue? I think you’ve lost the soul of the site and opened the door for the next iteration of SOCNET — a fee based site with no advertising.
If I were Zuck, I’d go to jgwentworth.com and see if I can unload some of my stock now.
AOL 2.0! Now with higher walls and a better gardener!
JGWentworth is the dream that inspires American Vision Mr Peters. And they also have $9.99 trades and no load Mutual Funds.
Facebook to me has become nothing more than an annoying street peddler. From Marketplace, Facebook Flyers, to Virtual Gifts, Facebook Apps, you name it, they’ve tried it and nothing works. Facebook users have been duped into clicking on a banner ad only to be bombarded with popups, spam and ridiculous re-directs. They’re not falling for this crap again, so someone please tell the University of Phoenix they can stop wasting their money on Facebook.
‘2. Don’t mix cookies with blatant, concious and intentional COLLECTION OF INFORMATION ABOUT… how did he put it?… ‘mind share’.’
What do you think double click is? What do you think Google does?
There’s what they will tell the public, then there’s what they actually do. They know people aren’t able to understand the innards of data collection, so they put out blanket statements.
“many of them are in jail already.”
The NSA isn’t? You should see the crazy people that work there.
“P.S. Don’t teach me how everything can be hacked”
We haven’t moved towards secure information exchange on the internet for a reason. There’s a reason stuff is still in plain text and easily filterable at any level on the iproute.
Tracking advertiser references across a single website is hardly an invasion of privacy.
Collecting personal information is. Ethics play a large roll in this, because there aren’t really laws that govern this type of thing. You really have to be comfortable logging on and submitting information to Facebook because there is nothing really holding them back from using the data you send to them in any way they want to.
Most people don’t sit back and think about this. They’d rather not do so. That’s them, that’s their due diligence. If they ignore it, it’s on them.
Is it just me or do I not want my Facebook feed filled with alerts every time someone clicks on something. I could careless about a brand trying to target something at me. How about unclutter my Facebook. I think what will happen is that with all this ad’s coming at people left and right in Facebook people will just get annoyed.
@32:
Exactly. People already make recommendations. Trusted recommendations are driven by satisfying products. To make that activity easier or controlled by advertisers is diluting the value of it and people will just find a more unambiguous way to make trusted recommendations.
This isn’t going to change the world. It’ll just make Facebook more noisy until something else comes along where the commercialism isn’t in the way of what people are really there to do. Nothing is free, but a social network with more modest ambitions might be the thing that could beat Facebook. The lengths Facebook has to go to support its perceived value is diminishing its core usefulness. That’s a bad sign, no?
The Project Beacon group on Facebook
http://stonybrook.facebook.com.....7278541402
Facebook won’t even give out case studies on how their advertising has worked for a company. I’ve requested information from them and they don’t have those figures. The campaign I’ve run on Facebook have been waste of money with no conversion rates. We’ve even looked into the sponsored group but $50,000 or more just doesn’t seem worth it to me without some evidence that it’s actually going to be beneficial.
I don’t know what to think about this announcement.
On one hand you have a platform that is heavily concentrated with young people (high school to college). On the other hand you have an announcement that has so many buzz words without much substance.
I guess if you are an advertiser targeting folks between 18 to 22 this is good news.
examples,
Taco Bell
1) Music
2) T-Mobile Fav5 accounts
3) Ringtones
4) New and Used Text Books
5) IPTV - could be huge here re-runs of “I Dream of Genie and Hogans Heroes”…. for those who smoke pot “”Night of the Living Dead”
6) Chevy Camaro
7) Ford Mustang Convertible
9) Jack in the Box - Late Night Drive Thru coupons
10) Schaefer or Keystone Beer
11) Blondies Pizza coupons (yum, in Berkeley)
Chris,
You didn’t understand my point, sorry to say that and I apologize for the heated language if that was the cause.
HE WANTS TO INTERVIENE IN A PUBLIC SPEECH! Think about it! In a big way!
He wants to sniff public speech, he wants to trade this stinking intelligence for big buck and people are supposed not to notice, right? No! Wrong.
It’s a fundamental breach of TRUST. Also, as to public speech - it’s worth a separate review whether it violates 5-th amendment. It’s America ! It’s not a asian despoty, remember? This snotty f…ck should be reminded just that.
Mike #44. Give me your $50k instead I’ll show you better results.
We spent money on facebook as well, we have a 0% clickthru rate in a very highly targeted demo in just one particular city. What a waste of time and money.
Even Val Pak gets better results among young people!
i think facebook could make more money through blackmail: “pay us $2billion US or we let zuckerberg make another speech”
“It’s a fundamental breach of TRUST. Also, as to public speech - it’s worth a separate review whether it violates 5-th amendment. It’s America ! It’s not a asian despoty, remember? This snotty f…ck should be reminded just that.”
I hate to say this, you know those contracts base jumpers have to sign that say the company doing the jumping off the bridge are not responsible should you DIE HORRIBLY —(see I can use caps too, whoohoo!)
https://register.facebook.com/terms.php
” By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. ”
Yeah, you jumped off the bridge buddy. We also have an extensive TOS, and our new project will have an even more extensive TOS. They ALL have extensive TOS’s and they all use the data for targeted advertising in one way or another.
What pisses me off is that they are taking the same old crap from 10 years ago and rebranding it as something new. It’s NOT NEW, and you’re NOT a REVOLUTIONARY, you’re a little PUNK just like the bastard Jobs boy.
Thank you good night, I am done here.
#35
What, you think users are anything more than a tool for Facebook to use to make money?
2 Mike and TechcrunchBook,
This is very understandable. The more people are engaged in their own interaction the less attention goes to ‘the rest’. Same happens in virtual worlds and other 3D environments where we were working on ads and metrics. People there are totally consumed by their own interaction with environment and each other - ads just DON’T WORK AT ALL.
If any company out there would like to partner with a firm to build applications for their Facebook Page / Facebook Ads - shoot me an e-mail: ryan@pdgcreative.com
Look guys. Facebook has no ethical/moral compass, so they are chasing the dollars. The only good thing that’s worth any money is the information. So, they have to sell it. At least Google tries to say they “do no evil”. What is Facebook’s reason to exist? It may have started out as a communication vehicle for college students, but its entirely different now.
Ads on Facebook will work when they are really distracting or really misleading (passed off as non-ads). Viable ads on Facebook are inherently bad for the experience on Facebook, probably more so than any other site. Maybe they’ll find a balance, maybe users will feel too locked in to leave, or maybe Facebook will die a slow death.
@46
You hit the nail on the head.
how is this any different from the NSA snoopin’ on your telephone call. The NSA gets to listen to ALL the data and act on it.
FB gets to “listen” to ALL the data and act on it.
This is called INVASION OF PRIVACY
THE ONLY WAY IS TO OPT IN FOR MARKETING SERVICES. FB will come back an say you are on a private platform we make the rules. The consumer will say “have a nice life I’m out of here there are many social network platforms”…… who wins, well you guessed it Google because they are the toll bridge for all the other platforms.
“how is this any different from the NSA snoopin’ on your telephone call. The NSA gets to listen to ALL the data and act on it.”
It’s different because when you sign up to a website like Google or Yahoo or FB or any site, you sign a legal contract that gives them the right.
You never sign a contract to have your phone or wires tapped. They either have to get a warrant with probable cause, or because of Bush, they no longer really have to do that.
The difference is consent. You gave FB consent when you said that you used careful due diligence and read the TOS before you agreed to use the website. IT’s as simple as that
Thank god it’s almost 5 I get to go home.
The next 100 years are not going to be same again.
The world is going to change.
Advertising is going to be revolutionized.
Vow
Short facebook buy bollywood
I am already annoyed when ’sponsored links’ show up in my mini feeds - if there are now going to be all kinds of product links I will just stop using facebook.
@53
John, the ONLY thing that’s worth any money is trust. For a service it’s everything. People trust you - they entrust you their personal data, money, preferences. People don’t trust you - you are out of biz, period. I hope BigBrotherbook users will understand where they are right now sooner rather than later.
Do Facebook users have to sign or agree to a revised tersm of use agreement? Will the existing user base, care, blink or embrace these changes?
this isn’t big news at all to me…and from what i can tell not to anyone else either. so you invented a few “tools” to basically give advertisers what they’ve been asking for a while now, a better way to target. the beacon stuff sounds retarded.
advertising online is still a crap shoot. people will find out how to get around it. at our core people don’t want to me marketed too. this just creates more clutter in a world that is already more cluttered. what ever happened to old fashioned brand building…i say it comes around again. flying your banner above the beach isn’t a way to build a brand.
im at the ad tech conference in ny and i dont see this coverage - where in ny is this
Now we need a new name for the consumer - how about “consharer” - a person in the social networking age who co-creates, contributes to and consumes products, services and content – essentially the consumer in 2007…
“Do Facebook users have to sign or agree to a revised tersm of use agreement?”
Every person on that website, as far as I can tell, has already given the rights to everything they submit to their servers away to be used in any way they see fit.
This is just like the musicians that uploaded songs to the myspace servers then complained that they weren’t making money on them.
You really have to READ. Literacy is key to having a good experience anywhere online. Read what people write, read the TOS and EULAs. If you don’t agree with them don’t use the service. I don’t use Microsoft Windows, because I DO NOT like the EULA. You have a choice, use it.
If you are illiterate, then have somebody read it to you. If you are stupid then watch TV instead.
I am a Facebook user and I have always liked the fact that they have a very clean platform unlike Myspace. As long as what they are doing doesn’t interfere with my user experience, I will stay.
I don’t know why everybody gets so pissed when somebody comes up with a great idea (blame it on timing if you must :)) and then makes a ton of money from it; that is what makes the US the greatest place in the world. You create a website, people love it, you get rich… GREAT!!!
Also, if you don’t like Facebook collecting your information LEAVE! They aren’t forcing you to stay. They can collect my information all they want and I hope they make a lot of money from it. I mean what do I care if they see that I like to fish or think that “Bring it On” was a great movie. What kind of information are you really keeping on your profile? I know that I took my SSN, bank account #’s and credit card #’s off of my profile a long time ago :).
Scott, you are their ideal user. People don’t think anything of agreements anymore. They see so much of them in software and for car loans, and rental agreements and everything else. They are overwhelmed, and just sign without thinking about it or reading them.
They go ahead and use X service thinking that the terms of use are the ones they thought up when they joined. Never having read the actual ones they agreed to.
In this high tech age, people do not want to act responsibly anymore. They want blanket coverage, and they want it internationally. That coverage does not and will never exist. The law assumes people are intelligent and educated.
Either new laws have to come out to protect dumb people as a race, or they will always be forming groups here and there complaining that they got screwed.
I’m sure Facebook will succeed in what they do.
I have no doubt that whatever they’ll do to monetize their system, it will maybe upset a minority of the users but at this point it wont affect FB, since it’s viral.
So viral that the small percentage dumping FB will be replaced within days.
They’re headed to an IPO, no one can stop them.
http://www.octabox.com
So inherent in the long range architecture and design, in the concept of Facebook was the eventuality that advertising would be incoroporated therein. I just wondered if a change in business model, would predicate a revised TOS, which is a standard business practice of most web sites. Its also a courtesy to inform your member base of the benefits and value of such changes. If you want their continued loyalty.
I do feel the subscriber base will want to know whats in it for them. In other words how do users profit from sharing. Its a realistic ?.
Chris, I’ve read and abided by TOS’s so you know. You misinterpret my post, but that okay, part of your reply was helpful.
@64
Dude, with all due respect. WHAT?
You should spend more time updating the info on your blog/website. The Canadian dollar is NOW at par with the Greenback. Why are your rates CDN$40 per hour and US$50 per hour for the same job. Frankly, I don’t care so don’t answer that.
Also, this comes from a guy who is telling people to read the TOS and EULA’s. HELLO!!!! And the best part calling people stupid and lecturing about literacy.
help
I understood this was an off-site, invitation only, non-disclosure event.
Chris, what exactly is your fear here? We know you hate MZ, and that’s fine, but get over it. The guy is a billionaire from FB and you can complain all you want, but that is the reality of it. What do you think they are going to do with the information they get besides make some money from it? Are they going to sell it to the Soviets?
Again, I make the point that the information people have on their profiles is what they have decided to share… it isn’t going to be something terribly worthwhile for them to gather other than for ad purposes. Are they going to sell the government my list of hobbies?
Please excuse the slight hint of sarcasm I have placed here but I just want you to spell out exactly what you are so frantically trying to warn everyone about. I am expecting a slam to my intelligence and a lecture on big brother and conspiracy theory to follow this post.
I agree with the backfire statement.
My “social graph” is already pissed off with most of the recent changes to Facebook, this will take it a step further IMHO.
@ Scott and Chris
Does it say somewhere in the TOS that people can’t complain about Facebook? Is anyone here suing Facebook for their new ad products or are they just saying they don’t like them?
Who’s not taking responsibility? All I see are people voicing discontent, as they have every right to do.
You seem to want people to like it or leave quietly. Why should they? Just as a trusted referral is the ‘Holy Grail of advertising’, a trusted complaint is an extremely effective deterrent for a product.
People who have a complaint about Facebook have every right to say it loudly and clearly, whether you like it or not.
@appetite
I agree with you. I am simply voicing my opinion and trying to get Chris to explain his…thats all.
I am not voicing discontent. I’m trying to understand the announcement. Granted this non-disclosure event was for the press and the business partner community.
I am guessing that the rumored Facebook Music announcement has been delayed until the music industry lines up better with the strategy. It was looking rushed from all the sources I was reading.
Microsoft will benefit from the data mining I am sure of that.
two words: adblock plus
(okay, that’s almost three.)
let’s just hope they update their filters for this one too!
I love these mind altering ads.
so IS there an ad blocking widget on FB? adblock plus? sweet
Imagine a social network that didn’t have the inherent need to cater to it’s investors/stakeholders.
good report, interesting comments.
@78 adblock plus complete with filtersetg current filters out all ads on facebook — including those in the news feed.
it’s unsure whether it will be able to filter out these new “trusted relationship” ads, but one can only hope…
GigaOm has an excellent post on the privacy issues.
http://gigaom.com/2007/11/06/f.....more-10615
I hear people complain about generic ads stating they’d at least like to get targeted ads; ads that at least apply to them.
I couldn’t disagree more. I don’t want socially engineered targeted ads. I want no ads but if I have to have them, generic ads (unless I’m searching for something) are just fine. I want to know that when I’m in the mood to buy something it’s becasue I sense that I want it/need it/etc. for reasons other than being sophisticatedly manipulated. Yeah I’m a pretty savvy consumer but it still freaks me out a bit. Maybe we just need to get used to it…
@C- Busy
Well if after seeing socially-engineered targeted ads would make you buy unnecessary stuff, you’re not that savvy afterall are you.
If you are really that savvy then a generic or targeted ad shouldn’t make a difference.
“Are you worried this will make Facebok too commercial?” “Actually I think this will make it less commercial because the ads now are [more generic].”
Christ alive. You’re supposed to be commercial. You’re a business. You sold part of that business to Microsoft for a very large sum of money and they expect to see a return even if you don’t. (Admittedly Microsoft paid so much they would never get a decent return even if Henry Ford was running Facebook, but at least he’d try.) If you honestly don’t want to make money you should have founded Facebook as a non-profit - its worked for Wikipedia so far (though it’s also why they’ll never progress from the bloated repository of nonsense to a reliable reference no matter how much they try - no incentive).
Now normally I wouldn’t expect people like Zuckerberg to come out and say “yes we’re being more commercial” because that annoys users, but he’s so far into la-la-land that I’m almost certain he actually means what he’s saying.
Trendy Sites can not mention the word ‘Commercial’ as they don’t want their Site to lose its Cool Factor.
But I have to comment on the history making quote of ‘Mark Zuckerberg is about to take to the stage’.
WOW that is almost as earth shattering as ‘One small step for mankind’.
It also brings to mind a legendary quote that was mentioned in the Times newspaper a few years back, when an ass licking Microsoft Employee greeted Bill Gates in London with the awesome quote of ‘On behalf of the human race we welcome you to London’.
Anyway back to the point about Facebook launching a new Advertising Platform across their Site.
Setting up Advertising Slots on Social Networks is such a sticky issue as almost everyone I know that uses a Social Network - Ads is the last Service that they are interested in using.
Plus what type of numbers is Zuckerberg hoping to get in revenues, as Two of the big Social Networks out there - MySpace(The Google Ad Deal) and YouTube - talk about their Advertising Business Models being very successful, but yet neither of them give out any concrete financial numbers.
If News International and Google are public quoted Companies, why are they then allowed to keep all of the data regarding their Social Network Advertising Models a total secret.
If the numbers were really that great then both Companies would be shouting from the roof. But they murmur little quotes in Q and A’s and then spent the rest of the day hyping up the large numbers of Users that they have on their Sites.
At the end of the day, Advertising does not work on Social Networks, no matter how much hype people like Mark Zuckerberg try to champion it.
Advertising on Facebook is not a novel approach.
Does this amount to noting more than a new way for an advertiser to stick their message somewhere new? Hmmm .. I think not.
Is a brand’s advert on my Facebook profile any more of a word of mouth recommendation than if I wore a T Shirt with that companie’s logo. Hmmm ..I think not
What’s of particular interest to me is the possibility to apply this network-context targeted ad technology to the HR field. I.E.: targeted with jobs based on your facebook, linkedin or similar presence.