
Facebook Home ads show Facebook at its worst - Pasanpr
https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/265cc8a17432
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ChuckMcM
So there is an interesting "issue" with Facebook which is that Facebook has so
many users that when even a very small fraction of them thinks Facebook should
be something that Facebook isn't trying to be, its a lot of people
disconnected from the "vision".

The issue is in quotes because for some this is a non-problem, these people
don't get it and they will eventually move on. For others it is a huge problem
because they see a potential product that they would like, and Facebook has
some or most of the pieces, but it never completes the picture.

One has to assume that because a television spot requires review and approval
and then insertion approval that it represents closely what the folks managing
the vision of what Facebook home should be. And from these commercials they
are selling a way to "hang out" with the people you really care about when you
are hanging out with people you are near and perhaps care less about.

As with real relationships you bring your complexes to them, not the other way
around.

~~~
onedev
That "issue" is something I've been trying to put into words for a while now
and you did it very very well. I think that absolutely describes the dynamics
between Facebook and the reaction of subsets of users every time the company
releases a new product.

~~~
fossuser
I think people don't always realize the scale of Facebook's user base. With
one billion people if 99% approve of a change you've still upset 10 million
people - 90% 100 million.

And the approval rating is probably much lower than that.

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richardjordan
My first reaction on seeing the goat ad was negative. Why they chose to
advertise this as an antisocial product which helps you disengage from ACTUAL
social activity escaped me.

I once wrote a blog boat decrying the attitude of many of my European friends
and family (who I see and keep up with on Facebook of course) for their
attitude summed up on the phrase "I don't live to work, I work to live"
...while this sounds superficially appealing most folks saying it use it as a
justification for letting life pass them by, taking Jo responsibility for
themselves, making no effort in their job and then blowing their paycheck on
booze at the weekend.

Facebook Home as portrayed in these ads appears to be for the folks zombieing
their way through life in this way. The artifice if social networking
replacing the actual social. It saddens me. Sharing "experiences" is nowhere
near as good as actually having experiences, being present fully in the
moment, in the company of others similarly engaged.

~~~
qb45
> My first reaction on seeing the goat ad was negative. Why they chose to
> advertise this as an antisocial product which helps you disengage from
> ACTUAL social activity escaped me.

Because they want to promote disengaging from actual social activities and
browsing facebook instead.

> Sharing "experiences" is nowhere near as good as actually having
> experiences, being present fully in the moment, in the company of others
> similarly engaged.

Yes, but "actually having experiences" doesn't give you a chance to watch
facebook ads, while "sharing experiences" does.

It's _your_ business to know what's better for you and their business to know
what's better for _them_. Facebook isn't a charity.

~~~
bergie
> _Because they want to promote disengaging from actual social activities and
> browsing facebook instead._

Exactly. This is as honest marketing as it gets.

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jfoster
The behaviour of the people in the ad is exactly the type of behaviour that
facebook can thrive off. Glance around in public occasionally and note that
half the people looking at their phones are looking at facebook. I think this
is the first time that facebook has so blatantly approved of that behaviour,
though.

Side-note: Was the adversary in the recent Doctor Who episode (Bells of Saint
John) a metaphor for this type of facebook behaviour?

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nikster
Advertising Facebook as the perfect tool for the completely unconscious is a
most unfortunate choice.

I have only seen the airplane ad and while I was watching it I was wondering
if they are being ironic. The hero of the ad so to speak is this guy who
thinks everything around him is oh so boring so he escapes to the colorful
fantasy world provided by his facebook phone.

I was waiting for the punch line only it never arrived.

~~~
bonzoesc
Have you ever boarded an airplane before? For me it's about two minutes of
waiting behind people putting up bags, 30 seconds of stowing bags and sitting
down, and then fifteen minutes of going through all my chats and social sites
hoping somebody has said something interesting since they called my boarding
group.

~~~
pestaa
I have never been on a plane. I'd be nervous and excited, and would take in as
much as I can see. I'd look at my stupid phone for exactly zero seconds.

~~~
gknoy
Takeoff, landing, and the flight in between is awesome. I've not flown enough
for that to get old. However, the time spend waiting to get ON the plane, or
waiting for it to start taxiing, is _amazingly_ boring. Imagine waiting in
line to get in an elevator, and then once you're inside, you have to wait ...
and wait ... and then the elevator attendants give the mandatory safety spiel
that you can't see well, and then finally it starts to move after ten minutes.

That's roughly what the pre-launch portion of an airplane trip is like, and I
wholeheartedly empathize with someone traveling alone wanting to mentally
escape it.

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jmduke
I understand the author's issues with the spots -- and agree with them -- but
he seems to demonstrate a poor understanding of what the goal of an
advertisement for a free Android overlay targeted mainly towards 18-35 yr olds
should be.

The goals of such an advertisement are to be loud and to promote immediate
curiosity, in my opinion.

~~~
Pasanpr
The author, Josh Elman, has worked at Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and is
now a principal at Greylock Partners with an investment focus on advertising
and social (among other things). I'd say he definitely understands the
advertising goals of a social media company.

~~~
jmduke
I'm not trying to be glib, but he really doesn't demonstrate it in the
article. His thesis is:

 _Facebook is celebrating all the wrong things. It advocates tuning out the
people around you to see what else is happening that must be more interesting
elsewhere. It foments FOMO._

Which sounds incredibly effective with the aforementioned target audience.

You could make the argument that he's talking less about the ads being
ineffective and talking more about the ads being deplorable, which is fair --
but why does that matter? I can't remember Apple deployed a marketing strategy
without the world 'magic', but I still think they're a great company.

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hansy
These ads are a little strange, but perhaps Facebook is targeting the younger
demographic with short attention spans? Perhaps in light of the recent market
reports that suggest teenagers are losing interest in Facebook?

Assuming this might be the case, think back when you were a teenager.

Family meals were really monotonous when all you could think about is running
back upstairs and resuming your IM sessions with your friends.

Boarding planes (not flying in them mind you) is hella boring and if you look
around today, almost everybody who has taken his/her seat is glued to their
phones to ease the banality of the entire process.

And the droning out of the CEO? Well, maybe that was Facebook's feeble, yet
well-intentioned attempt to poke fun at themselves. Who can't appreciate a
little self-deprecating humor?

Finally, I could be completely wrong and Facebook needs to hire a new agency
to handle their media image.

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bgruber
they're almost the exact opposite of the ad I would want to see: for example,
the family is having dinner, everybody is together and talking to each other,
and at the end is the reveal that the oldest kid is actually alone in his dorm
room, but he feels close to home because, well, facebook home.

on the other hand, i guess most people do in fact view their boss as a boring
blowhard so it's more attractive to advertise that your phone can help you
ignore him than it is to advertise that it can help you listen. but aren't ads
supposed to be aspirational?

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Hitchhiker
I hate to do this.. but..

" The Morlocks could have descended from today’s social network or hedge fund
owners, while the ancestors of the Eloi undoubtedly felt lucky initially, as
free tools helped them crash on each other’s couches more efficiently. What is
intriguing about Wells’s vision is that members of both species become
undignified, lesser creatures. (Morlocks eat Eloi, which is about as far as
one can go in rejecting empathy and dignity.)

source : Lanier, Jaron (2013-03-07). Who Owns The Future? . Penguin Books Ltd.
Kindle Edition.

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r00fus
It's a truly horrible ad. So un-Facebook, so unlike their landing page. Or
maybe it's the Facebook I didn't notice but is normal for everyone else?

How is this ad persuasive or even feel-good?

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spinchange
When Facebook tries to drive engagement to their site, is there "meaningful
content" qualifier that management uses? Because as far as I can tell, things
like "frictionless sharing," "sponsored stories," reposting old likes and even
harvesting them from user messages & mere brand mentions in updates have
absolutely ZERO to do "meaningful content."

As far as I can tell, Facebook wants users on their site constantly: clicking,
and interacting with it in just about any capacity, even an automated one.

Perhaps, mission statement-speak aside, these ads show facebook at its most
honest, if even in an idealized way.

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speeder
I still don't know why I click medium.com links here, the site does not work
on android thanks to shit CSS

~~~
evhead99
We'll look into that. Thanks.

~~~
saurabh
Basic Opera Mini support would be nice too.

<https://twitter.com/sausaw/status/320064095321722880>

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andrewvalish
It looks to me as if Facebook is attempting to represent a product that
immerses the user into any experience that they desire, regardless if it's
"social" or not. It's obvious that by presenting the viewer with fast-paced,
exciting content ready at the flick of a finger, it in turn captures the
viewers attention enough to evoke curiosity of the product's possibilities.

If Facebook were to take an intimate social approach with the ad campaign, it
could lead to negative results as well. Although I don't have conclusive
evidence, I believe a large portion of Facebook's user base uses the platform
to feel closer with people and organizations that they don't have immediate
relations with - or an actual follower base that will appreciate what they
post.

From my point of view, Facebook is more of a content consumption platform than
a broadcasting platform -- that's kind of a weird statement, but I'm just
partial to believing that most people use it to consume than to produce, hence
presenting all of these immersive experiences that users can escape to.

I should add that I agree that this may be harmful for Facebook's long term
image, but if the campaign's goal is to get this app into users hands and trap
them into the operating system, it seems like a good approach.

------
loblow
If these ads intended audience were grown-up, corporate they could have
featured business trip and family time, but these ads targets a different
demographics altogether.

These ads depicts turning boring into fun, features interruptions every few
seconds, showing people unhappy with life looking for a way to escape it and
wanting to be entertained. In the center is the phone.

Now what demographics has a short attention span, a low tolerance for boring,
is unhappy with life because it sucks and constantly want to stimulated ?

So facebook is targeting teenagers as loosely the 10-25, to the surprise of OP
who's an investor, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Teenagers are going mobile, sometimes mobile only at an unmatched rate and
they are the major driving force of any so called "social networking website",
as demonstrated with pretty much every of those websites in history. I believe
it is a known fact that facebook was losing users from this vital demographics
and mostly due to a shift of usage towards mobile.

The unexpected part in these ads is that they seem to be truthfully honest, to
me the ads shows facebook home as disruptive, obnoxious and unwelcomed
constant feed void of interesting content pushing people towards not living in
the moment which pretty much sums up facebook IMHO.

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sreyaNotfilc
The next installment of the Facebook Home commercial...

A guy at a party staring at his phone watching a guy at a party staring at his
phone watching a guy at a party staring at his phone watching a guy at a party
staring at his phone watching a screaming goat.

All through the magic Facebook Home :)

According to this article, the commercials pushes an anti-social agenda. I
agree for the most part. The commercial is a lot closer to reality than you
think. We are so connected to our phones that we forgot how live without it.

Social networks could be a great thing. But, it should also be use as an
amplifier of reality. I could go on an on about this topic, but I give up.
People have their obsessions. Whether it is fast foods, TV, internet, sex,
Honey Boo Boo Child, too much of anything is never a good thing.

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textminer
I don't know. Beach pictures, drag queens (Shangela jumps out of a box!), cute
kids, kitty cats, and club photos basically describes what I see the service
as being used for by my chums. Not a bad diversion for keeping up with far-
flung friends, in my honest opinion.

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minikomi
If these ads don't speak to you, you're probably not their profitable market.

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datashaman
It is interesting that one cannot see how many people liked or disliked the
videos on YouTube, and comments are disabled. They clearly are not that
confident about their campaign.

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gojomo
Indeed. Is using Facebook on a smart phone to slyly tune out people around
you, coworkers, and family really advancing the mission of "making the world
more open and connected"?

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Systemic33
> [...]friends around the world who can celebrate with them immediately from
> their phones.

I get the part of the videos, but is this guy delusional? We don't live in an
advert, so we don't send out PR quality photo's, or celebrate a friends
something by 'like'ing a photo. You do that by calling your friend and
congratulate. Social networks is marketing itself as a replacement for actual
networks, which is catastrophic.

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biznickman
Was literally about to write the same thing. The ads focus on Facebookcas a
cigarette break, not on the positive side of things.

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Zigurd
Facebook is a hyper-successful product that, among some people, has a bad
image for various reasons: uncool, invasive, socially destructive etc.

The goat ad is self-aware and funny. It is the opposite of faceless, bland,
tech-centric, and obvious. It also deflects expectations that Facebook Home
will be perfect straight out of the chute.

Seems to me it's just right.

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chatmasta
The past decade has wrought a massive shift in the communication paradigm of
humans. The context map of communication has completely changed. Over the next
decade, we will begin to see the both the positive and negative effects of our
collective shift in social perspective.

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nu2ycombinator
Its all about perception. I like Facebook Home ads. Its creative way of
communicating the idea about app instead of just listing out all the services.
I am not saying Chrome ad is bad, I lik them both, but Facebook ads got
creative edge.

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MortenK
Those ads don't appeal to me either. But if they are aiming at a teen to mid-
twenties demographic, which I'd imagine they are, it seems fairly spot-on.

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datashaman
"When you get messages, you don’t have to go into a siloed app to talk to
friends, messaging is pervasive"

Facebook Home is the very definition of a siloed app.

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leoplct
I agree

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leoplct
agree

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Nux
Fuck Facebook and fuck smartphones, too.

