DISQUS

Mashable - The Social Media Guide: 2006/09/28/facebook-to-launch-advertising-through-news-feed/

  • MCF · 3 years ago
    I completely agree Steve. I just wrote a post on that exact topic (see the trackback). If my friends can see the lame ads I click on, I might just have to stop clicking those ads...
  • Peter Brown · 3 years ago
    You know I seem to remember that the reason Friendster went from something to nothing was because they did stuff that people explicitly did not want ... giving them ample reason to abandon the service from one that DID do what people wanted.

    In the case of friendster they made a big fuss about ensuring people kept their profiles in order .. profiles for things that weren't people, like rock bands or cats, were proactively removed.

    MySpace does it right ... they advertise in a way that supports the community, not in a way that pisses it off!
  • rick gregory · 3 years ago
    "Oww, I stubbed my toe!! That hurts... Hey, maybe if I grab this gun and shoot myself in the foot it will help..."

    Sigh... This is one reason social networks can see new players rise and dominant ones fail... People continually forget that the network has no value without folks participating. Want to bet several hundred thousand FB users (hate that word!) are looking for new homes?
  • Steven · 3 years ago
    I honestly can't see facebook around in the next 3-5 years
  • Jordan Mitchell · 3 years ago
    I don't get it. Do you think users will really object to seeing 1 ad in this newsfeed? You can't go anywhere on the Web these days without seeing an ad! Look at THIS page, for crying out loud.

    I give Facebook users more credit that this. They know that Facebook is free and like most free content on the Internet, there is advertising involved. As long as Facebook doesn't get overstep their bounds on privacy again, this won't be an issue.
  • Nii A. · 3 years ago
    WTF indeed.
  • rick gregory · 3 years ago
    Ah, that damn MSM... those guys just don't factcheck... Seems Media Week got this entire story wrong according to Venurebeat:

    http://venturebeat.com/2006/09/28/facebooks-new...

    A brief quote:

    Melanie Deitch, spokeswoman at Facebook said Facebook was, as of this writing, trying to get the article clarified: “It’s not true, we’re trying to get it changed now,” she said. “No user click through is ever published to their friends. It is only if a user chooses to join a sponsored group that it would show up in the news feed.”

    So what a sponsored group? A sponsored group is when a company like Nike sponsors a channel on Facebook to engage in a dialogue with Facebook members. And you have to join the group, not merely click on an ad. So this is no where near as bad as it initially seemed. "
  • Pete Cashmore · 3 years ago
    Rick,

    MediaWeek probably had one or two sentences wrong, but saying they got the entire story wrong is an exaggeration. The story was that Facebook is putting ads in the news feed - that much is correct.
  • David G · 3 years ago
    Pete, I gotta call B/S on this post. What is your problem with advertising (far right sidebar = excluded, of course)?

    Any time you provide new tangible value to users for free, advertising will be accepted by them - or at least ignored - but no-one's going to leave facebook because of this.

    For the "faces" that "get" the feeds, there is huge value in their existence. Rolling them out without controls was a mistake but that doesn't mean the feeds don't have (massive) utility. Feed users now save a bunch of time and view a fraction of the ads they would have had to to stay equally informed. Every other feed post could be an ad, and users would still see fewer ads by using feeds than by checking the site.

    Feed-based advertising is nothing new; feedburner's been doing it for ages. It actually accomodates better content distribution because publishers are garuanteed revenues even when content is syndicated on 3rd party sites - not that Facebook should go there.

    The only time a community looses users is when it takes away their control or launches features that they can't control - that is not happening here. If you don't like the feed-ads, don't use the feeds - all that info is on the site - something tells me, the average user will choose the feeds with the ads.
  • Pete Cashmore · 3 years ago
    David,

    Despite the name, Facebook news feeds are not RSS feeds you subscribe to - they sit in the middle of your homepage and as far as I'm aware, you can't turn them off (although you can edit what goes in them, due to the backlash about the new feature). This isn't feed advertising.