More on Facebook
Hey Guys,
I was just glancing through this week's brandweek and noticed a very brief article on facebook (p 11) and I, like Dave, am a facebook fiend. Dave posted a blog a few weeks ago about the facebook newsfeed comparing it to new coke because everyone got very upset over the news feed. Well now it seems that facebook has decided to open up the newsfeed to advertisers, so next month ur newsfeed will not only update you about every little thing your friends are doing, it will also feature advertisements. I understand the need for advertisement sponsors, but I think updated advertisements in the newsfeed all the time is obnoxious.
Anyway, the article also mentions, as you may have noticed, that recently facebook has been opened up to everyone, you no longer need to be in college or in high school. Personally, I liked facebook better when it was only college kids, i felt it added some sense of differentiation from other web communities like myspace. I feel that facebook's rapid expansion is eventually going to hurt its brand image. It loved it when it was only for the college educated, then high school kids got in on the action and now everyone? What's the difference between facebook and myspace now? Tell me what you guys think. Do you think facebook has gone too far?
Heather Campbell
posted by Brand007 @ 2:28 PM
4 Comments:
I agree with you Heather. Such big steps will hurt Facebook's Brand image, but at the same time they are trying to attack another theme on the internet, closely related to MySpace. I don't know which came first, myspace or Facebook, but either or, the facebook will now try and reshape a new image as a direct competitor to Myspace.
To me this isn't necessarily a good thing. Facebook did have some leverage as the only college-based online yearbook until about a year or two ago. The whole concept of an online yearbook for college kids made it easier to befriend people who go to school with you. That is what made the Facebook Brand so unique, but now I think that idea has come and gone, and the makers of Facebook are trying to stay in tune with the chime, as I like to put it. This was inevitable, the internet is growing as fast as the world is... if not faster.
- Alex Zucker
I also agree that both advertising and opening up Facebook is going too far. Also, from the advertisers point of view, opening up Facebook may not be the best idea. With Facebook being a space for only college and high school students, it provided marketers with an easy way to reach that impressionable segment for products targeted to that age group. In the same issue of Brandweek there was an article about smaller social networks such as Yelp and Dogster. It mentioned that the common interests that bring people to these sites provide marketers with a better opportunity to reach a specific segment, and some brands, such as Special K, are even launching their own sites. Facebook used to have a part of this focused social network by only opening membership to college and high school students. Opening it up to everyone might ruin some of their advertising opportunities.
I have to disagree with everyone here. As annoyed and upset I was when Facebook opened up to high school students and then to everyone, I later noticed, it did not really have an effect on my Facebook “experience”. They are in a different network, so if you aren’t friends with them, they can’t see your info. It allows you to connect to other networks, and find friends from the past that you would have never found otherwise. I know I found a friend from when I was like 2 and we use to play together. There are the different networks, so marketers can still target which network they would like to reach.
The ads on the news feed is kind of funny I think. Marketers are becoming more creative in finding new ways to communicate their message to consumers. As much as I also hated the news feed when it first came out, the creator, Mark Zuckerberg, did listen to his consumers by adding a whole privacy control, and now I am not on it, but I do read it once in a while.
So Facebook is still keeping its differentiation from Myspace by having MORE privacy controls. So as much as some of it may be annoying, How much does it really effect you and your Facebook experience?
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=52207&Nid=25668&p=238468
Social Networking Sites Fuel E-Commerce Traffic
"SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES INCLUDING MYSPACE and Facebook are driving a bigger portion of traffic to retail sites than a year ago, according to new research by Hitwise. Social sites are driving more than 6% of retail traffic, up from 2.9% in 2005. MySpace alone accounted for about one-third of that traffic.
The increase in retail traffic reflects social sites increasingly becoming a starting point for Web users. "What we're seeing is a trend among social networking sites, particularly MySpace, becoming a home base for Internet users," said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise. That trend in turn generates more traffic from social sites to online retailers.
Search engines continue to be the main avenue through which people navigate to Internet shops, driving nearly 26% of their traffic. Competing online retailers sent a nearly equal portion of visitors, followed by email services at 9.6% and Web directories, including comparison shopping sites, at 5.6%."
I think that Mark Zuckerberg is just trying to do whatever makes money for the company. I doubt that ads have caused users to delete their accounts. They're annoying yes, but most users seem willing to live with them. Nobody was using Facebook over Myspace for the lack of ads anyways.
-Hasan Syed
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