Archives: November 2007

Caroline McCarthy has posted about a second offensive being launched by MoveOn.org. Apparently their statements last week were not enough. After Caroline wrote about MoveOn.org’s post, Facebook posted a response stating:

Facebook is listening to feedback from its users and committed to evolving Beacon so users have even more control over the actions shared from participating sites with their friends on Facebook. Facebook already has made changes to ensure that no information is shared unless a user receives notifications both on a participating website and on Facebook.

What this sounds like is that Facebook will soon respond by making changes to Beacon. MoveOn.org immediately responded stating that Facebook has not actually changed anything to Beacon. While they haven’t, I’d be willing to bet that Facebook is going to add the global opt-out option that was present on early screenshots of Facebook Beacon.

While most users haven’t been overly vocal about the Facebook Beacon service, bloggers definitely have. I can guarantee that the bloggers are not going to shut up until Facebook either makes Beacon an opt-in service or adds a global opt-out option. Do you think Facebook should change their Beacon system?

According to Reuters, Peter Levinshon has announced MySpace’s intent to launch a Facebook style newsfeed in the next 30 to 45 days. They will also be offering multiple profile types that differentiate among your different affiliation groups. This is what I once called the LinkedIn killer. Facebook has still failed to launch this feature and it appears that MySpace has realized the importance of such a feature.

The difference between MySpace and Facebook will soon be less apparent if MySpace can successfully launch these new features. Conversely, MySpace has a much more active user base that is younger. If MySpace can maintain that user base they may be able to keep them at their site through their college years. Otherwise, MySpace is going to slowly lose their user base as new high school and college students register for Facebook.

Do I think this feature could be the LinkedIn killer for Myspace? Theoretically, but the one thing MySpace doesn’t have is business users. Facebook on the other hand has a large number of journalists and business users that leverage the social networking site. MySpace has also announced their intent to launch their application platform. That was supposed to happen weeks ago though and users are still waiting for that to happen. I’m not quite sure if OpenSocial was one of the reasons for the delay but whatever the case is, MySpace has been hyping up their new features for month but have yet to come through on their word.

Do you think MySpace will be able to hold on to their remaining user base and prevent them from leaving for Facebook?

Last week, Simon Freed, James Ashton and Sam Hamilton, creators of the Advent calendar application, put their application up for sale on eBay. The application has over half a million users and over 22,000 daily users. Today, the auction winner bid $7,099. This amounts to one cent per user and approximately $0.33 per active user. Granted, this Facebook application has a short shelf life and the owner will have to figure out a way to drive users to another application in the next few weeks.

No Facebook applications have been sold for a significant amount yet. Currently, all of the money being generated is through advertising and custom application development. Most large companies have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for a first mover to hop in and snatch up an application for a significant amount. Unfotunately that hasn’t happened. Just as Facebook has an unproven advertising model, so do Facebook applications.

I was speaking with Caroline McCarthy of CNet this afternoon and she suggested that potential buyers may be stalling due to recent economic news. Whether or not the economy is the reason, no large acquisitions have taken place yet but there has been fair amount invested. Do you think any Facebook applications will be acquired for a significant amount?

Last night I posted about ABC News closing a deal with Facebook in which they provide their content free of charge to Facebook users. Today the press responded and the response is overwhelmingly negative. Caroline McCarthy writes:

But ABC News doesn’t seem to have caught onto the fact that Facebook’s user base sees the site as a platform for social recreation, not information consumption. None of the front-runners in the list of most popular third-party applications on the site deal with politics or news–instead, they include Flixster’s movie rating application, Slide’s “Top Friends,” iLike’s music app, and the woefully addicting Scrabulous.

She makes a great point. Facebook users seem to be using the site for recreation. The release about the partnership also fails to mention that the content will be distributed through Facebook’s U.S. Politics application which currently has less than 5,000 active daily users ranking it among the least used applications on Facebook. So while the press release may state that ABC News now has access to Facebook’s more then 52 million users, odds are that ABC News won’t be getting much more exposure.

As far as I can tell, Facebook and ABC News simply used this partnership as a way to generate a little buzz in the press the Monday after Thanksgiving. Aside from that, this is pretty much an insignificant event.

ABC News Homepage

ABC News Video Home

Alcohol and Facebook don’t seem to go together. According to Marina Strauss, a photo contest sponsored by Molson, in which students were encouraged to post photos of themselves partying, has was ended after facing complaints that the contest encouraged irresponsible drinking. I was under the impression that this promotion would have been a violation of Facebook’s terms of service but apparently that’s no longer the case. While controversial, I think the promotion sounded like a great idea.

Apparently Molson will still be announcing a winner of the contest even though the contest has ended. There have already been a number of controversies related to photos being posted on Facebook including a group that posted pictures of girls that were under the influence of alcohol. I didn’t have the opportunity to view the Molson contest but my guess is that similar pictures were posted to the contest. It is understandable that rewarding students with an $8,000 trip for five to Cancun for posting drunk photos may not be the best idea.

Molson has stated their intention to continue testing out alternative marketing strategies through various social media channels including Facebook. According to the article, Scott Keith of Lowe Roche ad agency believes that “nobody has cracked this thing,” referring to social media advertising. That’s kind of ironic given that his agency was chosen due to their history of social media advertising. Regardless, advertisers will try to develop creative new ways of advertising across social networks. Have you seen any effective ad promotions on Facebook?

Danny Sullivan has posted a great article for Advertising Age about search ads being the revolutionary advertising tool, not social ads. Danny has been a thought leader in the search engine industry for more then a decade so he has a slight bias but honestly, he makes a hell of a point:

Consider what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told us about the transformation: “We are announcing a new advertising system, not about broadcasting messages, about getting into the conversations between people.”

“Getting into” conversations. Yes, how we enjoy that. You’re in a coffee shop talking with a friend, and suddenly along comes the spokesperson for an artificial sweetener, just wanting to have a chat.

Go. Away.

Facebook holds the most accurate depiction of the social graph (at least in the United States). Facebook also has the ability to target ads based on profile data, through trusted connections and through conversations. While this may be the holy grail of market research it may not necessarily be the holy grail of advertising channels. As I previously suggested, Facebook has an unproven advertising model. For Facebook’s sake I hope that they have data backing up this model, otherwise they may have trouble validating their $15 billion valuation.

Danny definitely has a great point: “Search offers a key way for new products to emerge and be spread around. People turn to search for solutions.” It’s really as simple as that. I have to agree with Danny but if there was some way to combine the best of both worlds, you would truly have a phenomenal advertising opportunity. Imagine if Google enabled advertisers to not just market by keyword but also to select demographic information for each visitor. This would be revolutionary.

I can guarantee you that Google is working on this but they are going to need access to the type of data that Facebook has. We’ll see how this pans out but together, Facebook and Google would be a truly unstoppable force. Too bad Google doesn’t have an extra $15 billion to spend. In the meantime, search advertising reigns supreme and Facebook will be left to prove the viability of Social Ads. Facebook may come out on top but we still live in the age of the search engine.

The New York Times is reporting that ABC and Facebook have partnered to bring more political coverage to Facebook users. Through the partnership Facebook gets to distribute ABC’s political content for free and ABC gets exposure to the more then 52 million Facebook users. Facebook had already created the US Politics application but it hasn’t been extremely popular.

I’m not quite sure what else Facebook is looking to get out of this aside from free content. Free content is never a bad deal though. If you think about running a television station and not having to pay royalties on content, that’s always a great deal. It looks like the media companies are finally coming to terms and it also supports my argument that social networks are becoming the new television.

There is no discussion as to whether Facebook can generate advertising revenue on the pages that ABC content is being displayed or not. Conversely, ABC gets free exposure for their content through this agreement and can generate more advertising dollars by expanding their distribution channels. This partnership will also increase the need for politicians to become more active on Facebook. While a number of presedential candidates have created Facebook profiles, most of them have failed to do anything besides that.

Facebook had said that they were going to get more active in the campaigns. This is a giant step in increasing the political activity on their site.

Friday I posted that it is time to start asking questions about Facebook Beacon. I wrote that “while I don’t necessarily think that Facebook’s Beacon program is the ultimate test of individual privacy, I do believe that we are rapidly moving in a direction where some of us need to stand up and ask where the line will be drawn. While I will not suggest where that line falls in this post, we do need to figure it out.”

It looks like a few people are also feeling the same way. The line that I spoke of appears to be allowing users to have ownership of their own data. Honestly, I don’t see this happening though. Do you think Facebook is going to let you create a profile add a bunch of information, pictures, wall posts and more and then flip a switch and leave and take all of your data with you?

No way! Howard Lindzon does have a point though, something has got to give. At a minimum, I think Facebook should make Facebook Beacon an opt-in service. This concept of owning all the data that I enter is a significant one but I don’t see it happening. If I choose to use someone else’s service and enter data into it, they own it. That’s why I call it “someone else’s service.” If you want to own a bunch of data, go create your own service and get people to use it.

Suggesting that Facebook let a user export all of their data in XML or CSV format as Jason Calacanis suggests, is slightly ridiculous. I can understand having ownership of my own social graph but that’s where it ends. Even that would be a huge step for Facebook. Dave Winer suggests that other sites enable users to own their data as well. He wants Netflix to know what I rated various movies.

In theory this makes a lot of sense but personal user data is a competitive advantage for many services. If a user invests hundreds of hours rating movies, books or anything else, they aren’t going to want to go somewhere else. Letting users own their data will force competing sites to compete on services alone. This could be a good thing but it also could be a bad thing when the technologies developed by many of these sites are ultimately commodities. Letting users own their data could be the downfall of many web 2.0 sites. Do you think Facebook should give users ownership of their data?

One of my readers brought to my attention Alexa’s graph that compares MySpace and Facebook. Earlier today, Facebook crossed paths with MySpace. If you compare Compete.com’s graph, there is no way that Facebook has as much traffic as MySpace. There is no doubt that they will surpass MySpace is traffic at some point next year but for the time being, Facebook is still smaller.

Facebook has been adding more than 200,000 users to their site on a daily basis. In turn, Facebook has been doubling every six months. I’m not quite sure when Facebook will surpass MySpace in traffic but I am confident that it won’t happen this month or next month. Alexa has been historically inaccurate and this is just another sign of that. One thing is for sure: Facebook is growing by leaps and bounds.

Facebook is dominating the competition and many are wondering when Facebook’s growth will begin to slow. It doesn’t look like it will be slowing anytime soon. I wonder at what point Facebook will begin gaining a significant number of users from social networks aside from MySpace. MySpace has been the primary source of new users in addition to individuals that are new to social networks.

This afternoon, Peter Kafka proposed how to solve the Facebook Beacon issue. In order to solve a problem, you first need to assume that a problem exists. I for one, think that there is somewhat of a problem that exists. The problem is not Facebook Beacon though. The real issue is privacy. The web has forced upon us a new system in which you can be completely transparent or completely closed off. Fortunately there are some areas that reside in between but that area is for those that understand the tools they are using and have some common sense.

Ultimately, I have no idea how the Facebook Beacon situation is going to end up but what I do know is that Facebook is at the forefront of testing the limits of individuals’ privacy. This is a delicate issue and I’m starting to believe that it may in fact be a dangerous one. At what point do we really say enough is enough? Ultimately we have the ability to turn off the computer, put down the video camera or turn off any other technology that can be used to monitor ourselves.  The issue becomes blurry though when it comes to those that don’t understand the technology that they are using.

If my mom goes and makes a purchase at Amazon.com and her purchase, is there a guarantee that it won’t show up in my newsfeed? Currently there isn’t. There is also the chance that my mom didn’t choose to not have the purchase displayed. While Chris Kelly, Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, says that a box appears after individuals make a purchase, that box can disappear. I have already spoken with a number of individuals who have made purchases and the box didn’t show up (or at least they didn’t see it). If you make a purchase, don’t see the Facebook alert notification and suddenly your friends are notified, is that acceptable?

This accidental problem is going to be one that Facebook will be forced to resolve whether they like it or not. Peter Kafka suggests making the entire system opt-in. I’m not quite sure that will work but I’m also not sure what will. We are witnessing a test of individuals’ privacy limits and there are a few people that (as I have interpreted) are telling others to basically sit down and shut up. This will blow over they say.

While I don’t necessarily think that Facebook’s Beacon program is the ultimate test of individual privacy, I do believe that we are rapidly moving in a direction where some of us need to stand up and ask where the line will be drawn. While I will not suggest where that line falls in this post, we do need to figure it out. Otherwise we will sit down and watch someone else make that decision for us, the same way we so frequently (in this country at least) allow others to make major decisions that we aren’t happy with. The implications of a lack of privacy are significant and slightly frightening.

For Facebook Beacon, I think the question is: does this really makes our life better? Facebook in general has made most of our lives better. We all love connecting. Developers have enjoyed developing. Now marketers can enjoy marketing … in a pretty controversial way. Is this something that you want? Ultimately, the users can decide.