

Less than meets the eye at Facebook - wslh
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/02/less-than-meets-the-eye-at-facebook/

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pedalpete
I think this author fails to understand the business model of selling the user
data to marketing companies.

That 'like' is a data-point about that user which which adds to the mass of
data that FB sells. Also, the 'like' promotes that product within the system
providing content for FB visitors to feed on. It isn't even a loss leader,
it's a part of building their content.

The off-site 'like' has as much value to FB as the YouTube player adds to
YouTube, and is a small percentage of the value that AdWords (or have I got
the wrong product) provides to Google.

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joeblau
Interesting article. The MAU number which Barry comes up with (161 million)
seems to be more line with what Quantcast says Facebook MAU is (142 million).

