Facebook Ad Revenue Growth Real?
Facebook is not a publicly traded company. Although there are many people speculating that Facebook will go public in the near future. As a privately held company, Facebook is not required to release any financial information to the public. Furthermore, the company does not have to have its finances audited either. That doesn’t keep financial writers from trying to guess how much money Facebook is making.
Recent stories, like this one from Reuters, continue to suggest that Facebook is growing fast and that it is raking in tons of advertising revenues. The source of all this incoming cash, of course, is paid advertising. Some investors expect Facebook to earn more money than Google from advertising in the near future. The idea is that, unlike Google, Facebook users can be shown ads that are relevant to users even when they are not searching.
“We can provide really good, relevant advertising to people because they tell us exactly what they are interested in, and who they know, and those people tell us what they’re interested in,” Facebook Chief Executive Zuckerberg said at the All Things Digital conference this month.
Relevant Ads Worth More Money On Facebook
The business strategy behind Facebook’s rising advertising revenue is sound enough.
A user fills out a profile in which they state that they have “Interests” in various things. For example, a user might say that they are interested in chess. Then, theoretically, that user would be more likely to have advertisements related to chess appear than a user who had indicated interest in other topics. But, does the reality of Facebook ads bear this out?
If you are a Facebook user you may have noticed the various ads that appear on the right side of the screen. These ads are the ones that are supposed to be relevant and “targeted” to users based upon their profiles and other preferences. However, to most users, these ads appear to be thinly targeted, if at all, to their interests.
Recently, some advertisements tried to make use of the personal information in Facebook profiles by using the person’s age in the advertisement. Ads like “If you are 24 years old, you can get car insurance for $20 a month” appeared. Is this what Facebook means when they say, relevant advertising?
Other ads seem to be vaguely geographically targeted. For example, users in Phoenix get advertisements that make use of the word Phoenix (even for national brands and ads) or, in some cases, ads for actual Phoenix businesses. This is indeed useful, but hardly revolutionary. Unless you take advanced measures to frequently wipe out your Google cookies and other information you’ll get plenty of local ads there too.
Ironically, ads that are actually irrelevant and uninteresting to users will frequently appear on the user’s Facebook screen. For example, users that block Facebook games like Farmville or Cafe World still often see ads for those games despite having indicated that they are not interested. Users who are members of a Ford fan club, have tons of posts by themselves and friends about Fords, and have hundreds of “likes” for Ford related sites and information still see ads for Chevrolet. In fact, members of groups like Chevy Sucks or I Hate GM will still see advertisements for those products on Facebook.
Facebook Ads Not Relevant To Users – Worthless?
It is often said that reality is perception. Facebook frequently states how they can target users based upon their personal preferences and information and that concept is often repeated by journalists and analysts. But, is anyone actually checking to see such targeting is being done?
Going beneath the surface and doing some actual business analysis takes more time than many pundits can commit. Savvy technology writers, however, may uncover some interesting nuggets about Facebook’s so-called relevant advertising. The question is, can Facebook establish its “reality” or get a Facebook IPO stock for investors strategy executed before the world starts asking the hard questions?
Time will tell.
How To Create List in HootSuite
I figured out how to import a Twitter list into HootSuite. That is, I figured out how to take a list that I have already created and added Twitter users to inside of Twitter (on twitter.com) and then make that list usable inside of HootSuite. What I never really figured out how to do was to create a list inside of HootSuite independently of any Twitter user lists that I might have.
Recently, that issue kind of came to a head. As it turns out HootSuite has some really good documentation and some really useful help files which is kind of unusual for hip, new, social networking, Web 2.0, web services these days. It makes me want to keep them around longer and not bother ever looking at all of the other Twitter management services and desktop Twitter applications that seem to constantly pop up.
On the other hand, finding exactly what you are looking to do with HootSuite can be a bit difficult because so much information and options have to be jammed into the main user interface in order for the product to be as powerful at managing Twitter information and multiple user accounts as it is. That isn’t really HootSuite’s fault, per se, but it can make it cumbersome to learn about new features.
Check out my latest parenting tips for dads.
Fortunately, the solution has already been crafted by the folks at HootSuite. They have a section that is easily accessible when you click “HELP” at the bottom of the main HootSuite display page. It’s under Help Files – of course – but then under a secondary section called How To Articles. Usually, how-to articles is code for, here is how to do the most basic of things that you probably have already figured out, but if we put a bunch of them here it will look like our service is well documented. Fortunately, that is not the case with HootSuite whose How To articles are actually detailed step by step instructions for doing just about anything, including creating new lists inside of HootSuite.
The only reason it took me more than two seconds to find is that there are two how to articles listed above the one I needed about importing Twitter lists, but I can’t complain about that. After all, having everything fully documented in a virtue, not a problem.
If you want to know how to create a new Twitter list inside of HootSuite, here is the how to article I am talking about.
Have a Good Week Everyone, and I hope you don’t catch whatever illness I managed to pick up from my son this last week.
Facebook Like Google Killer ?
Wow. To read the technology news the last week or two you would think that Facebook had all but shut down those poor saps over at Google. Site after site is "reporting" that Facebook’s new universal Like Button is going to replace Google’s search engine rankings pages, aka SERPs, with a much better Internet search function based on its millions of users clicking LIKE on webpages all over the world.
(See! What did I tell you! That’s a LIKE button right there on this very webpage.)
This super-powerful Facebook weapon, called F8, is a Google killer and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. If you are not a Facebook user, you must sign up NOW. If you are a website owner, webmaster, content publisher, Internet marketer, writing to make money online, an online business marketing expert, or even if you are the guy who pumps the stuff out of the bottom of Porta-Potties, you must start using Facebook now! You must add Facebook LIKE buttons to every website, webpage, mobile phone, iPad, iPhone, iStore, iFacebook — I forgot where I was going with this sentence, because I just can’t stop thinking about the awesome new power of Facebook!
Whew!
Sarcasm can be hard to pull off in writing, even for a professional writer. How did I do?
I might be exaggerating a little bit, but only a little bit.
- The Mercury News says Sorry Google, Facebook Is the Web’s Most Important Company
- A Newsweek blogger headlines Facebook’s Play to Take Over THE ENTIRE INTERNET
- The co-founder and CEO of Mashable, via CNNTech, goes all past tense on us with How Facebook Won The Web
- The Tech Section Velocity at Forbes notes Facebook’s Plan for Internet Domination
You get the idea.
And, that’s just the "responsible" journalism subset of websites. You can about guess what this all sounds like out in the rabid echo chamber of social media, or social marketing, or Web 2.0, or whatever people are calling it these days.
If all of this sounds just a little too over-hyped, then you just don’t understand what is going on!
Right?
Wrong.
Facebook Like Button Is No Google Killer
Don’t get me wrong, Facebook’s new F8 initiative could potentially be pretty great. It might even grow into a useful tool, but that is a long way from being anything more than a blip on the technology radar. The problem, of course, is that the people writing about the big new development from the Facebook developer conference are people who would go to, or read about, a developer conference. This is not a cross-section of middle America. These are techies.
Read my parenting skills tips or my credit card rewards reviews.
Again, don’t misunderstand. I am a techie. I spent years as a high-end computer systems consultant. Although I bailed on the tech industry right before the Internet Bubble popped and the computer industry melted down, I have never given up those techie roots. Thanks to my time as a computer consultant working at numerous companies from senior management down to local desktop support, I have a lot of experience with Information Technology and the issues and problems IT Departments and IT managers face. I leveraged my background to become a freelance technology writer and built that into a pretty nice little freelance writing business. — In all fairness, my expertise after my computer days came in personal finance where I was a Certified Financial Planner. I leveraged that into becoming a freelance financial writer, and the two combined were what gave me enough clients and income to go from start-up entrepreneur to building my own small business.
However, these days I interact with a wider circle of people both professionally and personally, thanks in part to Facebook. Like many people, a few years ago I had no interest in being on Facebook, in large part because I didn’t really know anyone else who was on Facebook. More specifically, I thought I didn’t know anyone else on Facebook. The ONLY reason I even signed up was that an increasing number of freelance writing gigs started asking for people who were "experienced with social media," or even "experts in social marketing." It’s hard to say that you are an expert in social websites if you don’t have an account on any of them.
With a Top 10 Social Websites You MUST Have a Presence On from some magazine, I proceeded to sign up for six social networking websites. (The other four were so obviously not germane to anything even remotely business related that I didn’t bother.) One of those sites was Facebook. I think three of the others no longer exist, or if they do, are most certainly not anything that you MUST be a part of anymore.
I filled out the little profile thing, plugged my freelance writing website (www.arcticllama.com) as much as possible and posted a handful of things. It might have ended there, except for one little thing. A former high school classmate who still consider a friend, but who I hadn’t talked to in years, sent me a friend request. Soon, I was linked to a dozen or so high school classmates. Then, my sister sent me a friend request and mentioned that I should do the same for a cousin who was living abroad, and so on and so on. Eventually most of my family was on Facebook and an increasing number of my friends and former colleagues.
Facebook Weakens Privacy Then Asks Users To "Like" Everywhere They Go
Which brings me to exactly why the Facebook LIKE button will not replace Google or even threaten to cast a the tiniest shadow over Google and its massive search engine business.
There is no way that I am ever going to LIKE certain things lest my friends, family, and co-workers see them.
Already, I have taken Facebook’s privacy tools to their limits. I have my "friends" organized in lists and with every single post, I carefully select which list gets to see that status update, MANUALLY.
I have to. It is not an option.
I have some friends and relatives who have strong religious beliefs. I have other friends and family members who are very liberal. I have clients who are very traditional (I have to wear a suit and tie when I go onsite) and I have clients who are more freewheeling than my crazy friends (I might have to go onsite naked … if it’s Friday).Whatever I do, I need to ensure that it does not jeopardize relationships that I have spent years, or in some cases, a lifetime, cultivating just so that I "Like" a webpage or website.
There are LOTS of people using Facebook who are in a similar situation. And, with Facebook weakening its privacy standards at every opportunity, it only gets harder to maintain the proper boundaries. Facebook has already made it so that users cannot hide their friends list. That means that some users must choose between keeping an ex-girlfriend as a friend or risk losing their current girlfriend. That also goes for former employers, current employers, former and current bosses, former and current clients, and so on. And that is just one tiny thing.
Facebook has offered no easy to use controls for its users to keep their LIKES separated based on friend lists for example. If I "like" a Save the Baby Seals page will a client that sells clubs stop using my services? Or, will they insist that I "like" a How To Club Protestors site? (I jest, but you get the point.) In other words, users will only be able to recommend websites that they know are inoffensive across their entire friends list. Either that, or they will have to violate Facebook’s Terms of Service and sign up for multiple accounts.
In the end, Facebook has already shot itself in the foot with this current initiative. Far from threatening Google, Facebook’s F8 universal LIKE button is already doomed to fail.
After a handful of Likes cause ripples by being sent back to Facebook profiles, people will stop using the button and go back to using similar services that they can keep separated like Delicious, Digg, or Yahoo Buzz, or whatever. Then, will come the news stories like the ones you see now about employers firing someone, or not hiring them in the first place, because of what they "liked" or even because of what they had not "liked." Usage of the like Facebook function will dwindle until it becomes nothing more than a bunch of techies creating a virtual mirror of the funny news, political wailing, and Apple stories that dominate Digg.
Of course, by then, all of those people writing about Facebook’s New Google Killer App will be writing about the next must use Internet dominating service or feature. Just like they were all writing about Twitter two years ago.
You thought we forgot, didn’t you?
Will You Use Facebook Like Without Being Able to Control It?
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Since you can’t separate LIKES using any built-in Facebook privacy features, how will you handle the new F8 Universal Web-Wide Like Button? Will you ignore it or only Like certain kinds of websites?
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P.S. If you have any examples of BEFORE / AFTER type news stories from major technology pundits who were writing about the domination of Twitter within the last two years who are now writing about the domination of Facebook, I would love to hear about them. Leave them in the comment below and I’ll even DoFollow your comment link back to your LEGITIMATE website.
(Don’t bother if its a "landing page" for some Internet marketing affiliate thing or whatever. I will only Do Follow links to real content, no cloaked links, no landing pages, no tricks. If you have a legitimate sales ad or opportunity on a webpage containing useful information, that is fine.)
Google Buzz Gmail Fails Against Facebook & Twitter
Google’s recent attempt to crack the social networking market comes courtesy of an ill-conceived service titled Google Buzz. The idea is that that Buzz provides similar status updates, and shared links, and so on, right inside of your Google email account. Of course, it is this very concept that dooms Google Buzz to failure, and casts a wide shadows of doubt upon the company’s once legendary ability to understand what users want and deliver useful innovation to the web.
Google Buzz Flaw
The primary flaw with Google Buzz is, ironically, the feature that the company is most proud of, it’s tight integration with Google Mail.
The privacy advocates have thrown up a hundred red flags as Google rolled out Buzz, and the company seemed a bit unprepared for the backlash. More tellingly, it seemed to be completely caught off guard by the problems that were pointed out, as evidenced by the numerous changes it made to the platform just days after it was unveiled.
The only explanation is that Buzz was built by Google, inside of Google, by Googlers, who are advanced and dedicated users of all things Google. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except for when that it means that "within Google" is no longer in sync with the world outside of Google. Of course, a ten-year Google employee has no problem linking together all of his Google services. He’s probably been doing it through other means for years. Likewise, he is only too happy to have another way for friends, family, and co-workers to find all of this stuff that he put out there on the Internet for all to see.
However, out here, in the 99.99999999% of the world that is not inside of Google headquarters, we have lives that are not universally linked. Most people have families, friends, co-workers, co-workers who are friends, colleagues who are acquaintances, but not necessarily friends, bosses, ex-girlfriends, and ex-boyfriends, and ex-wives and ex-husbands. Some of us have kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. Likewise, some of us have parents, grandparents, and maybe even great-grandparents. For each of these groups of people, there are undoubtedly sub-groups, ranging from conservative to liberal, political to non-political, religious and not, those who enjoy British humor and those who think it is stupid, and on, and on, and on.
The point of all this is that in our lives we are not interested in blending all of these layers together. The Wednesday drinking buddy would laugh hilariously as the cartoon we found, while the dad from our kid’s play dates would be horribly offended. Surely, this is the point of lists and groups, but there is more.
Email vs. Social Networking or Gmail vs. Facebook
Which brings us to the fundamental misunderstanding that makes Buzz a non-starter. Who we email, and who we tweet, update, and share with, are not the same.
The super-techie types and the super-marketing types may insist that the power of social networking websites like Facebook and services like Twitter comes from being able to interact with your whole network all of the time. However, the vast majority of those of us who make up Facebook’s 400 million users are neither.
We only link to certain friends and contacts. We shudder when our Great Aunt Matilda sends us a friend request. We don’t want our contact list to be our friends list.
In other words, while my Google Address Book bursts at the seems with people I met at a conference two years ago, and who from time to time, I do send emails too, I am not interested in those people seeing pictures of my kids, my new barbeque, or where my tickets are for Buffs home games. Frankly, I’m not interested in hearing about those things from them either.
If Google wants to play in this space, they have to acknowledge what everyone else has already figured out. The web is not all just one big thing. That’s why social networking is often called Web 2.0. It is different than the "regular" Internet of websites, searches, and emails, and we like it that why.
Incidentally, if it is any consolation to the search engine king, this same concept is why, for all of its attempts and numerous re-designs, Facebook search and Facebook email is doomed to failure for anything outside of the Facebook environment. While I might love to hear what my buddy Frank has to say about his new high-definition LCD TV, I don’t care what he thinks about the benefits of knee surgery, spas in Crested Butte, or where to take my children for their birthdays.
Facebook and Google, social networking, and the regular Internet are all different, and never the two shall meet.
