Marketing Hipster

It's the connections that matter …..

  • About Cord
  • Social Media
  • Community
  • Marketing
  • Customer Experience
  • Funny
Subscribe

Facebook is Ready to Run

8 November 2007 by Cord Silverstein, 3 Comments

Thanks for stopping by! Hey, why don't you do what all the cool kids are doing and subscribe to my RSS feed? You know you want to, so go ahead, be bad, be very very bad... :) Thanks.

FacebookIt has already been wildly reported on the announcement from Facebook that they are going to be selling ads on users’ profile pages on items that users might have already purchased or recommended for others. In layman’s terms, Facebook is hoping to deliver the best targeted ads that we have ever seen online. An example of that might be if someone goes to Amazon and purchases a book. Amazon would ask the buyer at the time of purchase, would you like this purchase to be included on your Facebook profile? If you say yes, every single one of your friends will see the book you bought and where you bought it from. Very cool, but also a bit creepy.

I think anyone who has been in this business knew that this was eventually coming from Facebook. Now the question is whether it is going to work? I think there are still a lot of unanswered questions. The first one of my list would be whether this is going to piss off Facebook users? Facebook has always been the anti-MySpace. While MySpace was the wild wild west and when you signed on you got thirty different flashing and totally annoying banners and pop-ups. While at Facebook, you logged in and got exactly what you were expecting, the run down on everything that your friends have been doing all nicely structured and controlled. How much of that will change?

Another important question and still an inherent problem with online advertising is that for Facebook advertising to be successful, users are going to have to leave their beloved Facebook and go somewhere else. So again, using the Amazon example I used earlier, if I see one of my friends purchased a book, I am going to have to leave Facebook and go over to Amazon to buy it as well. We have seen a multitude of data that people do not like leaving their cozy little social networks.

And my final question would be how is Facebook going to handle the high wire act between targeted advertising with their users privacy? Facebook members love Facebook and they trust Facebook. Now that Facebook is going to be mining this incredible wealth of data they are capturing each and everyday to better target users for advertising, will Facebook lose that all important trust factor with its users?

These are all important issues and in my opinion, Mark Zuckerberg has continually made the right calls so I think he is going to be successfully doing this as well. I still get a little dizzy when I think of him turning down 1 BILLION dollars from Yahoo many months ago, but look who is laughing now.

  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
Get Shareaholic

Technorati Tags: Facebook, targeted ads, Amazon, online advertising, privacy, Yahoo

3 Responses to “Facebook is Ready to Run”

  1. Karina Wright 11 February 2008 at 11:32 am #

    Great post. I’m particularly interested if there will be a generational difference between Facebook users’ reactions: http://karinawright.com/node/10

    I think that to be successful, Facebook needs to be very wary about their users’ privacy concerns (obviously), but particularly if they’re employing targeted advertising efforts through third-party developed applications. It has the potential to go totally wrong, but if they do it right, they’ll definitely change the face of social network advertising.

  2. Yves Marie Danie 10 February 2009 at 2:43 pm #

    I’m not sure that I am too crazy about this – it feels like such an
    invasion of all things personal, so to speak. I just don’t know where
    the founder is going with this, really. hmmmm

    Love the post, btw.

  3. Yves Marie Danie 10 February 2009 at 2:58 pm #

    Okay, one last thing….what the founder understands and understands
    VERY well is just how much influence we, as people have over one
    another. In particularly, the trust and bond shared amongst people who
    are friends.

    There is nothing more powerful than the referral of
    a product/service from someone you admire/trust. Nothing, not even the
    most powerful of broadcast tools out there can trump this.

    Many would consider the recommendation of a business from one whom
    you trust as akin to the ‘Holy Grail Of Advertising & Marketing.’

    That said, it still bothers me.


Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

CommentLuv badgeShow more posts

Subscribe without commenting

  • twitter Twitter View my profile
  • linkedin Linkedin View my profile
  • posterous Posterous View my profile
  • facebook Facebook View my profile
  • friendfeed Friendfeed View my profile
  • delicious Delicious View my profile
  • stumbleupon Stumbleupon View my profile
  • youtube Youtube View my profile
  • Slideshare Slideshare View my profile
  • Skype Skype View my profile
  • Foursquare Foursquare View my profile
  • flickr Flickr View my profile

Subscribe to Marketing Hipster via Email

Enter your email address:

Recognized

Twitter Feed

Recent Comments

  • Hiring people who take their work personally, and other lessons from marketer Cord Silverstein at Capstrat - Frontline Results Marketing by Karl Sakas | Frontline Results Marketing by Karl Sakas on Crumbgate: A Case Study
  • Prepare for Web 3.0 - ContentManagement.com on Web 3.0 by Eric Schmidt
  • When Social Media Goes Bad — Saucy Horse Social Media on Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines: A social media case study
  • Local Search Frustration | Dipping into the Blogpond on The Customer Experience
  • Nate on Social Media: The little things matter
  • Lisa Sullivan on 2010 Retrospective: Looking back to move forward
  • Brian McDonald on 2010 Retrospective: Looking back to move forward
  • Lisa Creech Bledsoe on 2010 Retrospective: Looking back to move forward

Photos on flickr

Blogroll

  • Andy Beal
  • Angela Connor
  • Brian McDonald
  • Capstrat Blog
  • Dan London
  • David Barbara
  • Dawn Crawford
  • Erin Lane
  • Fadra Nally
  • Garnish Bar
  • Gregg Morris
  • Jay Dolan
  • Jim Hazen
  • JP Sherman
  • Karl Sakas
  • Lydia Simmons
  • Nathan Gilliatt
  • Phil Buckley
  • Punk Rock HR
  • Rob Laughter
  • Shannon Glutting
  • Sports Underground
  • Steven Keith
  • Tom Dwyer

Archives

  • March 2011 (1)
  • December 2010 (1)
  • November 2010 (1)
  • July 2010 (7)
  • June 2010 (9)
  • May 2010 (2)
  • February 2010 (2)
  • July 2009 (1)
  • June 2009 (1)
  • January 2009 (1)
  • January 2008 (4)
  • November 2007 (10)
  • September 2007 (10)
  • August 2007 (10)
  • July 2007 (33)
  • June 2007 (30)
  • May 2007 (20)
  • April 2007 (28)
  • March 2007 (43)
  • February 2007 (43)
  • January 2007 (43)
  • December 2006 (18)
Get Adobe Flash playerPlugin by wpburn.com wordpress themes

Copyright © Marketing Hipster 2012. All Rights Reserved.

A proud member of the WooThemes logo family