
Pay To “Highlight” Your Facebook Status Updates To More Friends - scapbi
http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/highlight-facebook-status-updates/
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tantalor
I find it interesting that "highlighted" posts are not actually marked as paid
in any way. There may be no way for users to opt-out of seeing highlighted
posts. So what we're left with are essentially advertisements (i.e., spam)
indistinguishable from real content.

Suppose a brand or political campaign pays you a premium to highlight
favorable posts, guaranteeing visibility in your friends' feeds. Suppose
Facebook does this without your knowledge when they detect favorable sentiment
about a brand in a post.

We already know they only surface posts to your feed when they cross some
relevance threshold. I think its clear now that relevance might mean a lot
more than personal relevance, but also relevance to their bottom line.

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res0nat0r
Why does this matter at all? You should be adding ignore filters from friends
who you aren't interested in seeing things from because they are not relevant,
annoying, dumb, etc, sponsored or not.

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AVTizzle
This matters. The whole reason things like Google and Yelp search work for
users is because their natural results are uncorrupted by commercial
incentives. Advertisers can pay to have their sponsored listings displayed
above the natural listings, but there's a clear, transparent distinction
between the two.

It's murky to let _any_ sponsored listings intertwine undifferentiated with
natural listings. It's an inherently advertiser-first, user-second policy, and
it's at the expense of the integrity of the natural service.

It's tough to argue that this is more for any benefit then their bottom line,
which, given Zuck's grand "Hacker Ethics" letter, kind of wreaks of bullshit.

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res0nat0r
This sounds like a win for advertisers and for users. Pay me money to put
something on facebook? Sweet. If I do this too many times I will pay for it by
being ignored or de-friended by everyone because I am just a shill.

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jcfrei
there's just no way, they can justify a 95B valuation at the current revenue
streams. if you look at the following estimates:

monthly visitors on google: 190M facebook: 150M

average time on site (from alexa) on google: 11min facebook: 22min

revenues of google in 2011 (from google sites): 26B facebook: 3.7B

this gap is so striking, that I wonder why investors don't realize, that you
just can't run ads as well on a social network as you can on a search engine.
it does't matter how targeted your ads are or how much you know about your
users - it's just not a place where a lot of people click on ads. they are
there for the social experience. facebook has some of the best people in the
industry and if they can't figure out how to monetize their site, the rest of
the social media startups will have an even more difficult time. this
highlighting feature is another attempt. i wouldn't be surprised if they
actually started charging large corporations like nike for their pages usage
(that could really be a profitable income source).

to sum it up: I see facebook much closer to a 30B valuation, with a realisitc
P/E ratio of around 20. because if facebook wants to remain the social fabric
of the web, it will also remain the web's workhorse.

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IsaacL
"i wouldn't be surprised if they actually started charging large corporations
like nike for their pages usage"

That's the thing, I think their valuation is based on the ton of potential
revenue opportunities like that they haven't explored yet. There's a ton of
companies getting value from Facebook marketing (not ads, pages and so forth),
Facebook just (in theory) needs to figure out how to capture some of that
value.

And look at stuff like Zynga as well -- they built a billion dollar company on
top of Facebook's platform, and now make up something like 10% of FB's
revenues IIRC. Are there any similar untapped opportunities for the company
that owns the world's social graph? I know it sounds kind of airy trying to
value a company on as-yet non-existent revenue streams, but what's the chance
they _don't_ manage to find a few more Zynga-scale opportunities in the next
ten years?

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egypturnash
The popularity of Facebook continues to puzzle me. Because its "all following
relationships must be mutual" paradigm is SO BROKEN. People end up following a
zillion people they don't give a damn about because that's what you have to do
if you want to broadcast there.

I really wish Google hadn't driven off half their early adopters of G+ with
their shitfit about "real names only" because it actually has asymmetrical
following relationships. When anyone can see your public posts, you only have
to follow people you care about instead, and the service doesn't have to do
these increasingly convoluted hacks to try and only show you things it thinks
you "want" to see.

If you're making some kind of social network, please save your future self -
and your future users - this kind of hassle. Allow asymmetrical following.

tl;dr: I miss Livejournal.

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machrider
Both approaches have value. I value Facebook's closed nature, as it gives me a
place to communicate with close friends and family. I live across the country
from most of my family, but I see their photos and keep up with them all the
time, it's great.

Also, on G+, I have to put people in a circle if I want to broadcast to them
(and not to the entire world), right? So I'm still following people I might
not want to be following using the asymmetric approach.

The stuff I post on my blog is a totally different kind of communication, and
I'm happy to do it outside the context of social networking.

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lomegor
Just as a FYI, you can share to people outside of your circles, if they have
it enabled. Instead of selecting a circle to share, just put their names in.
Of course, this depends on the settings of the other person and doesn't
disprove anything. Just wanted to tell you in case it's of any use for you.

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lancewiggs
The IPO is the signal, and this is more evidence. Facebook is being taken over
by an MBA mindset, and that short term, cash first thinking spells doom for
the customer experience and then the company.

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alaskamiller
Lol, no.

The IPO is because Facebook can't continue to attract top talent in the valley
without those option numbers meaning something.

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aik
Maybe it's a bit of both? Going IPO strictly to attract top talent seems a
little naive, no?

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phillmv
Well… Zuckerberg isn't liquid, is he?

I'm sure you can find _a_ buyer for Facebook stock right now, but it seems
like the obvious way for all those VCs, angels and early employees to cash
out.

Being able to issue more shares to be used as stock options, or making your
financials less messy to deal with, is merely icing on the cake

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alaskamiller
Tumblr has been doing this for weeks. Got some hype early then people stopped
caring and just kept scrolling through the feeds.

But Facebook is a vastly different beast. Creators and curators have a
different relationship with the audience. This is the new $1 bling people used
to give each other back in the day.

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tantalor

        Introducing: Highlighted Posts
        February 3, 2012
    
        Every now and then, a post comes along that’s meant for big things. It
        could be pulling the wraps off your new project, promoting your next
        show, raising awareness for a cause, or just sharing a truly
        incredible photo.
    
        Today you’ll have a new option to Highlight those extra-important
        posts. For one dollar, your post will stand out in the Dashboard with
        a customizable sticker to make sure your followers take notice!
    

<http://staff.tumblr.com/post/16980189397/highlighted-posts>

This seems to be a little different than Facebook's highlighted posts.
Highlighted posts on Tumblr are distinguishable and would not be more visible
than regular posts. (I'm assuming Tumblr dashboards are not filtered by
relevance.)

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mparlane
Tomorrow: Pay to hide or set relationship status to single.

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Jimmie
Pay to not have us randomly change your relationship status every 6 months.

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processing
Pay for privacy

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dsirijus
Pay for friend accept.

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cnbeuiwx
God... I really miss the Internet before it became "social".

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binarymax
I'll play devils advocate here. I think this is a good idea. 99% of my feed is
basically just cat pictures. There could be great stuff being created by my
friends and not showing on my feed because it is pushed down by all the shared
crap. Nobody is going to pay for me to see their cat picture, but they will
pay for me to see the new project they are working on, or an event they are
throwing that I may want to attend, and this is value added for me.

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sanxiyn
> Nobody is going to pay for me to see their cat picture

Famous last words.

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bo1024
Hard to feel optimistic about this idea even for adults on facebook.

For kids, this seems so wrong it should almost be illegal, or at least on the
level of in-app purchases. "Mommy, this update is _really_ important! Can you
link your credit card to my facebook account?" &c.

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sparknlaunch12
I thought facebook already sorts your news stream by 'top stories'. So things
like engagements, weddings, birthdays etc go to the top anyway.

Are they appealing to attention seekers or those whose status posts are so
utterly boring that they never make the top of the list anyway?

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tejaswiy
Really? You get to own all our data and still get to charge us for the
service?

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teej
Of course they get to charge you. Your data is worthless. Your eyeballs are
the only thing of value. And Facebook controls the flow of information to
eyeballs. That's what your paying for - access to Facebook's distribution to
your friends' eyeballs.

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oskarth
I know this isn't 4chan or reddit, but I couldn't help sharing two specific,
and quite harmless (albeit hard to execute), trolls:

\- use highlighted posts to literally promote pictures of cats

\- make sure FB never reaches 1bn users. Right now they are at around 900m,
and growing slower and glower. A coordinated effort amongst people who are on
the fence of signing off for good could make sure that number asymptotically
ought to reach 1bn, but never does. Wouldn't that be a let down? _"Any day
now, I think"_

Yes, I'm in your typical FB-doesn't-really-add-any-value camp. And as long as
FB are having fun to the detriment of the individual, who is to say we as
people (coordinated, law-abiding netizens) can't have our fun too?

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planetguy
_use highlighted posts to literally promote pictures of cats_

Fairly sure this wouldn't wind up differing in any significant way from my
existing facebook news feed.

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sachitgupta
Next up: $x to _not_ show when you view someones profile. So by default,
anyone can see if you view their profile.

A stalkers worst nightmare - how many people would sign up for that?

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arrogant
This is exactly how okcupid's premium membership operates. You can always
anonymously visit profiles, but unless you're a paid member, it'll no longer
show you your visitors. Paying the premium lets you "stalk" others while still
seeing who is visiting you.

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slig
But on OkC, that's easily avoidable: just create another dummy account and
stalk from there.

On FB, you can't just do that because people are now showing stuff to "friends
only".

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AznHisoka
Of course they wouldn't do this, but I've love it if they made you pay $1 for
every status update. Would get rid of a lot of the fluff.

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nextparadigms
The beginning of the end for Facebook.

