

Facebook Sells Your Friends - pathik
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_40/b4197064860826.htm

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tokenadult
From the article: "'I can target my exact audience, rather than trying to come
up with a proxy for it,' like looking at search terms or which websites people
visit, says Belden, who was spending about $4,000 a month on Facebook earlier
in the year before he was forced to rein in his marketing expenses because of
budget issues."

Maybe I am misreading this, but in context this seems to say that the guy
thinks Facebook offers better value than any other advertising platform, but
STILL doesn't make him enough money that he can afford to keep using it.
Doesn't Facebook have to help people make money for it to continue to gain
advertising revenue?

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natrius
This guy is assuming he's doing a better job of finding people who would be
interested in his product on Facebook than he could via Google. He's probably
wrong. Search queries are a better metric for determining intent than
demographics are.

~~~
sobriquet
Demand generation vs demand fulfillment. Once people are looking to buy
something search ads are a great way to connect with them, but it's hard to
reach them if they aren't yet searching.

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eitally
Duh?

How many times have there been articles and posts about how its users are not
Facebook's customers. Facebook is monetized on advertising, selling their
users' personal data.

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paul
And yet it's completely false. Facebook does not sell personal data.
Advertisers pay to display ads -- they don't get info about you.

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jpeterson
Come on, Paul. Do you really believe that Facebook is building this vast
social graph and treasure trove of personal information, and they'll not try
to exploit it in every way they can for huge profits? That's really what we're
talking about here.

Facebook can spin it any way they like, but in the end they will have to
invade everyone's privacy in order to make money. There's just no other value
on that site. There are lots of brilliant engineers at Facebook, but it seems
they are kept so preoccupied with "hacking" that they don't recognize the evil
empire they're helping to build.

~~~
alain94040
This is pure speculation on your part. You could replace Facebook with Google
and make the exact same argument.

Let's keep outrage for when outrageous things happen.

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techiferous
This might be naive, but a monthly subscription model might work for facebook.
Then you'd have no more ads, no more privacy snafus--the goals of the company
would be aligned with the goals of the users because the users would be
customers. It's simple. Would it tick off some users? Sure, but that hasn't
stopped facebook in the past.

I'd pay $10/month for a facebook that cares about me as a customer. Right now
I don't use it because facebook's goals aren't aligned with mine, even though
it's a valuable service.

But $10/month per user probably wouldn't be enough revenue to match facebook's
high valuation.

~~~
houseabsolute
> But $10/month per user probably wouldn't be enough revenue to match
> facebook's high valuation.

What, five billion a month would not be enough? Of course, no one is going to
pay for Facebook, mostly because some people aren't going to pay for Facebook
and when some people aren't there, no one is.

~~~
techiferous
Great point. It gives me an idea: you could turn it on its head and make the
subscription price the _main feature_. $200/month allows you access to the
super-exclusive social network. ;)

~~~
houseabsolute
Haven't you heard of executive dating services? ;)

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rblion
Worth reading fully. The last sentence speaks volumes...

"And it's not yet clear how those hundreds of millions of people will feel
when they realize they've been permanently joined on the site by advertisers
who are not all that interested in friendship."

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joe_the_user
I'm looking at my facebook page.

The ads are for: two online degrees which I don't need, (having an advanced
degree that FB should know about) and one cheap TV offer, which I don't want
since I don't watch TV.

I can see zero evidence of ads being targeted to me, even though I in the past
I clicked "like" and "dislike" on ads in the vein hope they'd become more
relevant or at least less offensive.

My friends posted complaints on my page concerning my "liking" of said ads
since they _hated_ Facebook using my name as a reference.

 _But main thing is, if FB is so great, why do they have same scam-
ish/opportunist ads that Yahoo has?_

(refreshing, I get the same sort of thing - one targeted to my geographical
location - mass market products, FB stuff, NOTHING SPECIFIC TO WHAT I WANT).

FB, a billion dollar company that still has only "potential"...

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akronim
_I can see zero evidence of ads being targeted to me,_

try changing your status to engaged...

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Groxx
Hah! I encountered the same majorly-mismatched... then got engaged -> married.
When I left, I was _still_ getting _tons_ of "ENGAGMENT RING HEER"-level ads,
despite being married.

