

Facebook Turns Friend Activity Into New Ad Format - hornokplease
http://mashable.com/2011/01/25/facebook-sponsored-stories/

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jgilliam
Remember when people were paid to appear in a corporation's ads?

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code_duck
Yeah, this is a nice twist - Facebook makes money, Starbucks makes money, and
the people providing the content and authority get nothing.

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gojomo
Well, the "people providing the content and authority" get Facebook for
free... including for all the years before this was unveiled.

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code_duck
Considering that Facebook has multi-billion dollar valuation, makes money
selling users advertising, and makes money selling analyses of user
information, my view is that the users are kindly donating Facebook their
information, not that Facebook is kindly donating their service. While users
may benefit personally from the service being available, Facebook are the ones
benefiting financially.

Users do not give Facebook money directly, but they contribute something
valuable to the company just by using the site. I see it as a business
relationship the same as if I was paying money for the service.

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gojomo
_Neither_ side is 'kindly donating' their portion. Both are getting back more
than they give, in a voluntary mutually-beneficial transaction. Or they'd each
do something else instead.

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code_duck
I agree, I mainly state it like that as a foil to the commonly heard idea that
these sites are giving us something for free. They're not; they're giving us a
service in exchange for what we give to them.

Now and then I see someone complain about a free service, Google for instance,
and receive a response such as "Well you're entitled to all your money back".
This is stated as if the customer has no right to complain, because the
service is 'free'. As you noted, that it is not the case. It's more of a
symbiotic relationship.

Thought Facebook is clearly free to do as they wish, I personally feel that
using my messages to friends to promote products for Facebook's profit is
something other than what I expected when I signed up.

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izendejas
Somehow I knew this was coming and had a similar idea for a startup, except
I'd make these ads more transactional oriented and give users who triggered
the ad a cut, since after all they are promoting a product/service. And I'd
limit it to n ads per user per week, otherwise you can get spammy behavior out
of "friends" trying to maximize their credits--sound familiar?

Anyway, we'll see how that works out. I would honestly demand money if a brand
tried to associate myself with them even if it makes sense. It's time to track
and rewad word-of-mouth ads--consider them this now. It's clear Facebook and
others are in a position to do this. You know that $50 billion+ valuation?
Doesn't sound as crazy now, does it?

update: Reading some comments on mashable, I see a good counter to my point:
why should FB pay you if they don't charge you to use their site? Fair enough,
but at some point users deserve to be rewarded by brands/companies (not
facebook) for their loyalty and for attracting them new customers.

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wedesoft
Using the example from the article. This could go very wrong. I imagine
something along those lines:

"Puking after drinking bad coffee - at Starbucks with my friend.

STARBUCKS!"

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liamk
I'm guessing they can analyze the sentiment of the statement, and opt out when
it's negative.

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JonnieCache
I certainly cannot foresee 4chan gaming this NO SIREE.

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jonknee
Facebook bans you from doing this: "You will not use your personal profile for
your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an
advertiser)."

Must be nice to make the rules.

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alsocasey
I don't understand what's to stop the system accidentally generating sponsored
ads following negative interaction with a brand: you'd get John Smith says -
Starbuck's sucks! - sponsored story!

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izendejas
What's nifty about the mechanism is that it doesn't, at least for now and
according to the article, require the ever so difficult sentiment analysis.
You have to explicitly "like" something or check in. Some users will have fun
abusing this, but not so much more than some researchers abuse machine
learning/nlp who complicate their living by putting too many constraints on a
machine intelligence task. (Don't get me wrong, I love machine learning/nlp;
it just doesn't have to be more complicated than it already is.)

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praptak
_"You have to explicitly "like" something or check in."_

This only works if the "like" actions are filtered to company-approved
material only. Otherwise you can "like" a post trashing the company.

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izendejas
Yep. I'm sure FB will be smart about it.

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iantimothy
What's interesting is that companies were already creating incentives for
people to like a page, check-in to a place, post to a wall ...

Now, not only do they have to create incentives for these actions to take
place, they have to pay Facebook for the right for these actions to be
displayed prominently.

It is like double taxation.

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ohyes
I seem to recall when Facebook (or was it Gmail?) was started, something like
this was one of the proposals for producing revenue. There was quite an uproar
over it because it meant that whoever it was would be going through all of
your personal information and parsing it for different keywords. It was deemed
'too creepy' and toned down.

The times they are a changin'.

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hessenwolf
When I am I going to get paid to wear the labels on the outside of my clothes?

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pz
Never, as long as other people are willing to pay to do the same thing :)

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axxl
If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

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EGreg
also called "bid to increase your rank in the newsfeed"

I am not against this as long as the stories are marked as sponsored, and not
part of the main results. After all that's what Google's adwords are, in a
sense.

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pz
"sponsored stories" will appear in the right hand column along with ads and
other things like "people you may know". your newsfeed will be the same as
always and the ranking there is unaffected by which stories can be sponsored.

