
Why Isn’t Facebook Making More Money?  - makimaki
http://publishing2.com/2008/09/22/why-isnt-facebook-making-more-money-hint-advertiser-value-and-user-value-are-not-aligned/
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furiouslol
I thought the points made by the author are valid. The reason why Adwords work
so well is because the ads match our intention at exactly the right time.

If I'm planning a trip to Barcelona next week, a Barcelona hotel ad would
appeal to me now but not last month. Timing matters.

Just because Facebook knows a lot about me does not mean their ads appeal to
me. If I like Japanese food, do I need to be bombarded by Japanese food ads
every day?

Google's ads, on the other hand, will only show the Japanese food ads, when I
am explicitly looking for Japanese food.

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greendestiny
I think Google's been very successful with their approach, so much so people
suggest its some kind of optimum. You've already got a fairly good idea of
what you want when you're at the point of typing some keywords, and at that
point its hard to beat Google, but there is a whole stage before that point
where you don't have a keyword for what you want.

~~~
volida
If you know you want you know the word. Except if you mean people don't know
what they want.

~~~
lacker
You can know what you want without knowing the word.

For example you might be thinking "I want to go to that website that is kinda
like hacker news... but a bit more mainstream... and it has a little alien
logo." You would know the website if you saw it, and if you could remember the
word "reddit" your search would be easy. But you might not know that word.

And the search kinda works anyways:
<http://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+news+with+alien+logo>

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ojbyrne
$300 million is nothing to sneeze at. Last I saw they had ~ 500 employees =
$50 million cost, double it to account for non-labor costs, and its a pretty
healthy business especially in difficult times. They have the cash flow to
experiment further to get to google-like revenues (which is what they're
doing).

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vaksel
I think part of it is the audience. Facebook has mostly young people and most
of them don't bother clicking on ads.

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known
What is the real USP of Facebook?

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iamdave
You know personally I'm sick and well beyond tired of these types of blogs
that talk about valuations and marketing and ads with Facebook as if everyday
users actually care. I can only count one circumstance where Facebook actually
gave back after a brief little program with Microsoft, but other than that if
Facebook is bringing in millions and millions of dollars with ad revenue,

don't tell me about it unless they plan on sharing it with their users.
Metcalfe's Law has never meant more than it does to me than when I read blogs
like this.

~~~
unalone
People who are involved in a business tend to be interested in making money.
Facebook is spending a lot of money to please its users, and it wants to make
some back. This is logical.

Other people want to make money and it helps them to read stories of other
successes and failures. Some of those people read Hacker News.

I skip a lot of stories on HN. Try not to get too caught up in it. It's not
worth your time.

