They're After You

There has been some noise lately about Facebook's potential new ad service that could display ads targeted to you based on your Facebook information while you're on sites outside of Facebook.  The way it would work is that Facebook would stick a cookie on your machine and when an ad they sold sees you on another site, it knows that you're a fan of goth-punk gospel music.  This is, of course, causing all sorts of concern over privacy issues.  People seem to find it scary enough that Google shows you ads based on your search results, to think that they might see ads based on their Facebook profile is of great concern to them.  To me, this isn't a big deal.  There isn't some person somewhere sitting at a computer, pouring over Facebook profiles, and matching those people up to ads.  There is just some algorithm that sees I'm a fan of Sprite, and shows me an ad for Sprite instead of Coke.  Well, they would attempt to show me an ad, but I wouldn't see it.  That's not the point, though.  The point is that is there really a big difference between seeing an ad on Facebook that is targeted to you because of something you have in your profile, and seeing and ad on MSN targeted to you because of something you have in your profile?  The site you're visiting doesn't see this information.  They don't know what you have in your profile.  All of that information stays within the confines of Facebook's network.  When Facebook introduced the ability to target flyers using specifics in profiles, people said it was great, and wondered why it took so long to get here.  This is really the same concept, just showing it to you somewhere else.  Also, all of this is contingent on you having that cookie on your machine.  Lastly, there is the fact that if I see an ad telling me about something for 50-Cent, I really don't care, but if I saw an ad for something Sarah Brightman related, I'd be interested.  As a consumer, this would actually work in my favor. If I find the ads of interest, they no long are such an annoyance.  Instead of being considered ads, they move into that long sought by advertisers position of being "value-adds."

Perhaps I am too lenient about all of this.  What are your thoughts?

Good News, Everybody!

Kevin Martin, chairman of the FCC, recently told the New York Times that the FCC plans to end exclusive deals between telecom companies and apartment communities.  This is good for a variety of reasons.  First, hopefully this would mean that there will be more choices to consumers.  As Ars points out, that usually just means one or two more choices, that is still better than nothing.  Secondly, and closer to home, assuming that this would apply to all telecom companies and not just cable providers, I could switch over from using AT&T.  As I've mentioned before, the irony is that AT&T is one of the major backers of this proposal.  I have had nothing with problems with AT&T since moving into my new apartment a few months ago.  The service is horrible, with my getting disconnected multiple times a day.  I can't manage to keep a solid connection more than a day or two.  Not to mention that this service is costing me more than my cable internet and TV combined cost me.  Also, I just plain don't like AT&T and really don't want to do business with them.  The issue is expected to be discussed in a few days at the FCC meeting.  Martin said that it is possible that they may even strike down existing contracts before they expire.  While I don't think we can expect anything to actually have an effect in the immediate future, I'm hoping for something in the next year or so.  Then again, that might just be wishful thinking.

Experiment Part 3: El Fin

In case you somehow missed it, I ran an experiment this past week on Facebook.  It stemmed from wanting to play with the new controls you had over targeting flyers.  They now let you get very specific, right down to targeting people that mention certain things on their profiles.  I took that idea, and applied it to writing up an ad to offer a dinner date to someone.  Let's take a look at the numbers.

I had a click through rate of 1.073%, which I think is like half as good as what others reported as average, if I recall.  It is actually a bit higher than I was expecting given the nature of the flyer.  This translated into about 2.05% of the total population targeted.  Looking at it as being that 2% of girls were willing to click on a flyer on Facebook for a dinner date it is quite amusing as this is the same percentage of girls that say grabbing their breasts is an ok way to say hello.  I wonder if there's a correlation. 

My total impressions were about twice what my total population was.  Given that there is probably some amount of people that were in my population but didn't even log in this last week, I'd guess that anyone that saw it did so at least twice. 

The clicks were fairly well distributed throughout the period the flyer ran.  I didn't receive a ton at first then nothing, they came at a pretty even rate.  I thought that was rather interesting.

My final average cost per click was 64% of my max CPC.  The total amount that I spent was only 8% of what my maximum cost could have been.  All in all, this was a cheap experiment.

So, after all of this, did I get anyone that actually responded?  Nope.  Not a one.  While I did have people that actually clicked through, no one felt like responding to the ad.  When I told my friend the results she commented that it was rather sad.  I asked for me or the people that clicked through, to which she said, "Both."  I guess that pretty much sums up the whole experiment, though: sad.

As a final note, I don't actually see any ads, so I don't know if these types of flyers are commonplace or not.  In the past, you could target your flyers to a specific network, so if someone were to put something like this up, everyone would see it.  Now, though, since you can be so specific, I would think that your money could be used much more efficiently.  By targeting a very specific set of people, you would cut out anyone clicking on the ad that doesn't meet your target audience. So, has anyone seen an ad of this type before?  Do you think you might start seeing them now?

An Idea I Support

I found this story via Techdirt, and thought I'd pass it along because I thought it was great.  A student at a high school in Georgia wrote an article for the school paper called "Another Modest Proposal" paying tribute to Jonathan Swift.  His proposal was to limit the spread of stupidity by executing the bottom 25% of people based on an IQ test.  The reasoning being that the less intelligent are continually breeding at an increasing rate, while the more intelligent on breeding at a slower rate.  If you're ever seen Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy, you'll have a humorous memory of the opening that explains this concept.  While I am in full support of this idea being proposed, the principal of the school didn't see the wisdom.  Instead of realizing that the article was a tribute to Swift, he confiscated papers, and told the newspaper that they needed to write more positive, uplifting stories instead.  Needless to say, his actions prompted an outrage, and a large online uprising.  A Facebook group was created, and word quickly spread.  A newspaper in Atlanta picked up the story and ran it, spreading it even further.  You can also find the student's original article here. 

It seems like more and more stories are being brought to people's attention because someone tried to stifle it.  I don't understand why more people aren't aware of the fact that in this day and age, you are better off simply ignoring something than trying to hide it.  Had the principal done nothing about this story, I never would have heard about it, nor would you.  Bunch of idiots out there, maybe we should do something about that...

Experiment Part 2

I started an experiment on Monday to test out Facebook's new flyer targeting tools, and as just a social experiment.  It entailed making a flyer offering a date that was targeted to a specific set of girls in my area.  It's been running since Monday night, and will be up until next Monday.  Here are the results of it so far.

I've had a .96% click through rate so far.  This is about what I was expecting, if not higher.  I've seen a ton of stuff about how bad the click through rates on flyers are, and coupled with the topic of this flyer I didn't expect many takers.  I have yet to receive any responses, though, so the clicks I've received are probably just the curious. 

I know that each impression is not a unique individual, but the total impressions I've received so far equal about 85% of the total population.  Watching theses impressions increases has given some insight to when people get on Facebook.  For example, during the day time, the impressions increases fairly slowly.  However, once night comes, they rack up quite quickly.  This is to be expected, as most people are probably logging on and spending time on the site at night.  This seems to be later in the night, too, such as after 8.  Another interesting thing is the rate at which the impressions have increased.  At the beginning of the campaign, the impressions racked up rather quickly.  Now they seem to be increasing more slowly.  I'm not sure if this is related to how Facebook displays them, or if it is based on usage habits of my target audience.  What is interesting is that this mirrors what I've seen happen on Google ads I've run (those weren't for dates, just FYI).  In the beginning, they got a ton of views.  Then, as time progressed, they tapered off.

I'm paying based on how many clicks I receive, and the rate I pay is determined by the system based on how much they used to "bid" for my placement.  I set a maximum per click, and a maximum per day limit.  So far, the most I've paid for a click is 72% of what my maximum is.  Also, the average of what I'm paying is 60% of my max.

I'll probably have an update this weekend on how things are going.  I still am not expecting to actually hear anything, but I'm a bit surprised at how many clicks I've received, so who knows.

MSFB

So it looks like Microsoft was the one that won out in buying a minority stake in Facebook, paying $240 million to be able to say that.  Microsoft was fighting with Google, and somewhat Yahoo, for the stake.  The approximate value placed on Facebook with this investment is $15 billion. Along with a small stake, Microsoft also grabbed the rights to be the exclusive advertiser for Facebook overseas.  This is in addition to Microsoft's exclusive ad deal with Facebook for the US until 2011. 

I'm not too surprised that Microsoft won out on this one.  If for no other reason than the history the two companies have.  Despite Facebook constantly being likened to Google, they have worked closely with Microsoft for quite some time, and have shied away from dealing with the search giant.  Also, just looking at the employees that are on Facebook, Microsoft dominates there too.  Even Billy G has a Facebook profile.

Facebook says that it plans to use the money for additional people and possible acquisitions.  It will also try to expand its reach in the international market.  Today it is fairly large in North America and Western Europe, but little elsewhere. 

One pretty interesting part of all of this is that it lends that much more credibility to Facebook.  While it has become quite popular with online media, by being able to establish such a large valuation, it really sets itself up as a big deal.  To put things in some perspective, JC Penney has a market cap of $12.1 billion, about $3 billion less than Facebook's valuation.  Pretty neat, huh?

A World for the Indecisive

Tim Elliott is taking this week to run an experiment and read only Scoble's link blog and Techmeme.  He wants to compare the two, and see how they stack up to each other.  I think that this is an interesting idea, but fairly pointless.  While there was a time when you had to decide choosing between two sources of information, that world is quickly leaving.  You no longer have to sacrifice one thing in order to obtain another.  Today you can get a whole multitude of sources of information all for free and all very quickly.  Thanks to RSS and feed readers you don't even have to go to different places to find all your news.  If you find a source that has good information, just subscribe to it.  Today the only thing that you need to invest is time.  While that may seem like an evermore valuable resource, the truth is that it doesn't take much time to increase the volume of what you look at.  When you have a "river of news," as Scoble calls it, you can quickly scan over a ton of stuff.  When you see something that catches your fancy you read it, otherwise you just keep going.  Without having to take the time to click through to different pages, or different sites, you can consume an incredible amount of information.  This means that it really doesn't matter which provider might have marginally better news than the next guy.  As long as they have something that is worthwhile, you can just throw them in with the rest. 

Just to clarify, I do think that there is an importance on the quality of information you get.  You just don't need to be as picky when it comes to having multiple quality sources.  Instead of having to decide which great publication gets your subscription dollars, you can just get them all.  By this means, you can cover a broad range of topics and sources, and get a better overall picture.  It does not mean that you should just read everything, or apply no filters at all, because there is a lot of crap out there.

Experiment Part 1

I was talking to a friend of mine about Facebook’s new flyer advertising options when an idea for an experiment came up.  To give a quick overview, you can now get very granular with in your selection of who sees your flyer. In the past, it was based solely on which network would see it.  Now you can target based on any number of criteria.  What is interesting is that it gives you a real time number of how many people your ad will be hitting.  This can provide for some fun time killing (just how many men between the age of 18 and 29 like The Notebook), or for some legit marketing information. For fun, I can choose to target only single females in my city that like Family Guy.  Pulling that info up is when the idea came.  What if I tried making a flyer for an ad to get a date?  Facebook’s flyers are known to have abysmal click-through rates, so odds would be against me before even beginning.  Second, lets be honest, how likely is someone to actually click on and respond to an ad for a date on there?  To be honest, my hypothesis is that I won’t get any responses from this, but I figure this gives me something to write about for the next couple days. 

I’ll be running the ad for a week using competitive rates for maximum visibility.  It will give a quick blurb saying that I’m looking for someone to take to dinner, and have a link to a page with who I am and contact info.  I’ll post an update to how it’s going later in the week, and will have final results at the end.  Like I said, I’ll be surprised if anyone responds, but who knows I might meet some new people.

MIA, AT&T, and a Horror Story

I know, I know.  I've once again been MIA for quite some time.  I have much better excuses this time, though.  This time it includes more than me just being lazy.

First, my grandmother died a few weeks ago.  Between living at the hospital for a couple days, and then all of the craziness that followed, that put me off the grid for about a week.  Since then, I've just been trying desperately to catch back up with everything.  Before that happened, things at work were going at just the right pace where I could work and not worry about deadlines.  Now, though, I'm still about a week or two behind.  It's amazing how things will snowball like that.  Missing a week suddenly puts you behind three.  So I've been working a ton lately, and that usually means that when I get home it's either late or I have no desire to do anything but vege.  All of that, though, means that not only have I not really had time to write, but I've also not had time to read.  There were a couple of things that would catch my eye, but they're all considerably old news now.  Oh well.

Since most topics I was going to mention have pretty much come and gone, I'll just briefly touch on a couple.  Both about AT&T.  First, if you follow those links in the last sentence, you'll see the story about AT&T's new terms of service that basically said that they could disconnect you as a customer if you said things that were critical of the company.  While that does seem a bit absurd, I honestly would not doubt AT&T to do it.  The second article, though, is where they retracted on that, and said they never meant it to mean that they'd actually disconnect someone for being critical.  Yeah, right. 
The other item about AT&T hits close to home.  I started doing some searching to find out just why telecom companies are allowed to have exclusive deals with apartment and condo communities.  This really pisses me off that they do that (like pisses me off more than you can even imagine).  Well in the course of my searching, I found a fairly recent post about the FCC looking into prohibiting these exclusive deals.  One of the chief proponents of barring such contracts?  AT&T.  I feel a bit dirty, but I am actually rooting for AT&T here.  Ironically, AT&T thinks that if they get these contracts banned that they'll sign up more customers, all the while I'm going to jump ship from them first chance that comes along.  Companies with cheaper, better service provide for my area, but I can't get them because my complex has a contract with AT&T.  Oh, wait, not all of my complex, just half of my complex.  If I were living in the building across from mine, I wouldn't have this problem.

I'll close with a horror story that will make you just angry and saddened at the same time.  Go check out this post on this lady's blog, and then read in order all of the ones after it.  Yes, it's a number of posts.  Yes, it's worth the read.  Here's the gist of it: Concerned parents take baby to doctor, hospital calls CPS, CPS takes away baby from non-abusive parents.  The lady is actually a friend of a friend, so she's vouched for and isn't writing BS.  Check it out, it's just crazy.