

The Facebook Chart That Freaks Google Out - donmcc
http://allthingsd.com/20110926/the-facebook-chart-that-freaks-google-out/?mod=tweet

======
freshhawk
The comments here and the comments at allthingsD make it clear that many
people don't understand how cookies and data collection work which is
surprising.

Every time you visit a page with any kind of facebook integration (like button
or whatever) facebook adds your online behaviour to it's user profile.

Ideally, from facebooks perspective, everyone would always be logged in to
facebook and all pages would have a like button, then they can track
everything everyone does on the web. That's why the stickiness thing is
important, not just because active users are less likely to quit.

This is how you monetize a free social service.

~~~
esmevane
I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse, here, but would you please clarify
where the money is, there?

~~~
pork
Theoretically, fine-grained targeted advertising is the money. To get to that
fine grain, you need lots of Stasi-like data. That's the tough part, unless
you're FB. The other half (algorithms) can be continually iterated and
improved by throwing math/CS/physics PhDs at the problem.

~~~
glimcat
Now if only it was easier for said PhDs to get access to said data.

Actually, on second thought, that's a bit horrifying.

~~~
freshhawk
Ad networks, research companies and domain parking companies will kill to get
PhD's on staff to do those kind of optimization problems.

They pay well but the good ones never stay long as the job is pretty boring
for someone with those skills, it's really just a few problems that need to be
solved over and over to the 10th decimal place because slight improvements in
results mean lot's of real dollars.

~~~
glimcat
Optimization, bleh.

Mining the tar out of Facebook's rather Orwellian data set? FUN!

------
ashishgandhi
Yes, people spend a lot of time on FB but how much of it converts to revenue?
Google could be converting visitors to revenue faster than what FB could be.
Say, I search for a .is domain registrar, I click on the ad which seems to be
selling it the cheapest and I leave Google. My short visit was converted to
revenue and converted quick. On the other hand, I go to FB not to look for
anything specific but only checkout what other people are sharing or share
something myself. I think the way I use FB, since I'm not looking for anything
specific, I have a lesser inclination towards clicking on a link which is
trying to sell me something. Google could show me links to stuff I was looking
for making it more likely for me to click on them. (Yes, there are gamers who
buy credit but I'm not one of them and not suitable to comment there. But from
what I remember, it's not a significant share of FB revenue - but I may
remember very old stuff and I would be wrong today.)

~~~
mchanson
The graph that would be more interesting is a graph of ad sales. Google and
Facebook are both fighting for the same marketing budget dollars.

~~~
jbooth
Sort of. Google ads tend to be conversion-oriented and facebook ads tend to be
branding-oriented. PPC vs CPM.

------
nostromo
According to this line of thinking, Google has spent the past 5 years being
freaked out by Yahoo.

Of course they haven't. I think Google's Facebook envy has everything to do
with the data Facebook is amassing -- not with time spent on their service.

~~~
artursapek
_According to this line of thinking, Google has spent the past 5 years being
freaked out by Yahoo._

Not necessarily, I think what is important here is the slope of Facebook's
line, not its overall y-value.

------
parfe
I have trouble understanding why this graph would freak google out.

The more time I spend on google sites the less time I'm spending on sites I
reached through google ads.

~~~
artursapek
This chart isn't suggesting that more people are clicking on Google ads.

Facebook is a direct competitor with Adwords. Besides, the more time you spend
on Google sites, the more of Google's ads you're exposed to. The steepness of
Facebook's curve is very likely to freak Google out.

~~~
jrockway
_The steepness of Facebook's curve is very likely to freak Google out._

Facebook looks likely to exceed 200% in just a few years!

~~~
pork
Your comment made me laugh, but in seriousness, FB might be causing people to
spend more time than they used to online, so that 200% number is, in a certain
sense, not implausible.

------
RobertHubert
Anyone think about the fact that Google has spent years becoming a minimalist
for search effort and user experience, making results faster, more accurate,
predict better, and be more painless... In short, they make a users experience
and interactions with the site quick, almost transparent. Get in get out!
Predict and find my results before I'm even done typing and show me the entire
site before hitting "search". Now take other sites, how long does it take to
find anything on facebook?... for ever, you have to dig and filter, and look
and check... Its painful. I know it does not amount to much more than an
observation but all that extra time spent does not reflect usefulness or
effort on the users side. Id like to see a CPM comparison chart for popular
sites!

~~~
itswindy
That's the old Google you're talking about.

------
notatoad
"Note that just a couple of years ago, someone might have thought to include
Myspace in here. Remember?"

and facebook, not being fundamentally different to myspace, could easily be
victim to the exact same thing. google, however, is sufficiently diversified
to be much more resistant to user fickleness (firefox spellcheck says that's a
word).

------
astrodust
Is it just me, or is a monochrome only chart a really bad way to present this
information? It requires effort to decode.

------
holograham
Stupid chart, huge difference here. Google has the advantage of knowing what a
user wants when they are searching for it. Facebook is always pushing ads when
users are looking to stalk people's photos.

~~~
randomdata
Not to mention that Google is in the business of sending you away from their
website; hopefully through an ad link.

If users are spending more time on Facebook, one could extrapolate that they
are spending less time clicking on ads. The exact opposite of what Google
wants.

------
pixelpublish
These comparisons are a bit silly. They do not do the same thing. We should
use this graph to compare Google to Yahoo and AOL and see how they fare
against their competitors, not how many of their users spend 18 hours on
Farmville.

------
r00fus
Considering Facebook and Google are both advertising-funded companies, I don't
see what the concern is.

Start showing me slope on advertising revenue or momentum with major
advertisers and I'll take notice.

Google's core market (search advertising) just had a new fence put up
(Google+), which seems to be doing a good job keeping Facebook from marching
right on in (social search advertising).

Facebook's ad-market strength is display advertising. This is a much smaller
piece of the pie, and they don't completely own it, but they're making
inroads. I expect Yahoo/AOL are much more worried about this than Google.

------
mikeg8
I wonder what would happen if google blacklisted all facebook.com URLs. when I
search for things, the first or second link is usually a company or fan FB
page and if those were removed from Google's index, I wonder if that would
have any affect on this graph.

Another thought, FB has become my IM... I spend a majority of time on there
chatting, not clicking from page to page so FB's display ad's would be mush
less effective to users like myself because the time I spend using there
platform to IM is irrelevant/less valuable in relation to google sites.

------
klochner
It took me a minute to figure out how facebook gained so much traffic without
a commensurate decrease in the other sites.

My take-away is that facebook has mostly vacuumed up MySpace traffic (which
was conveniently omitted from the chart).

------
FJim
For the sake of argument lets say time spent on line = revenue. This picture
shows us top line numbers. What about costs? I suspect that Google's cost for
delivering content is markedly lower than Facebook's.

