Lyons: Facebook's Roar Becomes a Meow | Newsweek Enterprise - Technology

Facebook’s Roar Becomes a Meow

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Facebook's latest gambit involves "engagement ads," in which advertisers create Facebook pages so that members can become "fans" of the brand and spread word to their friends. Jon Gibs, vice president of media analytics at Nielsen Online, thinks the idea might have some legs. (He recently became a fan of a kind of hot sauce.) Gibs is also heartened by recent Nielsen statistics that show Facebook doubled its monthly unique U.S. visitors to 38 million in August 2008 from 19 million last year. Also, the average Facebook user now spends 100 minutes per month on Facebook compared with 60 minutes a year ago. "Facebook has a tremendous amount of future potential," Gibs says. "Their challenge is just, what is the magic bullet?"

With the economy collapsing, and advertisers zipping their pocketbooks shut, it may take a while to find out.

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Word of mouth tricks like the Beacon attempt are their only hope if they want to turn this into a cash crop. Personally I find such tactics frightening. I've heard of companies paying everyday people to plug products in their conversations with friends and associates. This would probably be the best way to advertise via something like Facebook, but think of the consequences to society. Your day to day interactions are bought out by corporate interests. You can't even turn to your best friend for advice without wondering who's paying him to talk to you. I understand why companies want to pay people for word of mouth advertising. I don't understand why people want to take the money. That's sick. My speech isn't for sale. I'm sure a lot of people's is though; so, Facebook my advice to you is invest in real word of mouth advertising using real people paid to infiltrate social groups and plug products. Use pretty girls and trendy men. Find the mavericks, early adapters and trend setters. Additionally mix this with artificial agents and data mining programs like Beacon. Of course you'll want to keep it all on the DL. People may not like it but they'll get used to it. Privacy and personal opinion is a luxury of the past. Today we are all products.

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Posted By: chriswininger @ 10/17/2008 5:17:28 PM

Word of mouth tricks like the Beacon attempt are their only hope if they want to turn this into a cash crop. Personally I find such tactics frightening. I've heard of companies paying everyday people to plug products in their conversations with friends and associates. This would probably be the best way to advertise via something like Facebook, but think of the consequences to society. Your day to day interactions are bought out by corporate interests. You can't even turn to your best friend for advice without wondering who's paying him to talk to you. I understand why companies want to pay people for word of mouth advertising. I don't understand why people want to take the money. That's sick. My speech isn't for sale. I'm sure a lot of people's is though; so, Facebook my advice to you is invest in real word of mouth advertising using real people paid to infiltrate social groups and plug products. Use pretty girls and trendy men. Find the mavericks, early adapters and trend setters. Additionally mix this with artificial agents and data mining programs like Beacon. Of course you'll want to keep it all on the DL. People may not like it but they'll get used to it. Privacy and personal opinion is a luxury of the past. Today we are all products.
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Posted By: timmyjohnboy @ 10/16/2008 7:40:58 AM

I wonder if ads were implemented at the launch, perhaps users would have been able to stomache them better.