3 posts tagged “facebook.com”

The Financial Times reports today that Central Office of Information (COI), the UK Government's "center of excellence for marketing and communications," has put a moratorium on advertising on social media sites like Facebook.   COI organizes marketing campaigns to promote issues of public importance (education, health, welfare, etc.) for various UK Government departments.  The organization announced that it is reviewing how it handles advertising on social networking sites fearing that its ads could appear on innapropriate user generated sites.  Alan Bishop, chief executive of the COI, explained the decision to the FT saying:

"We always have to keep a very close eye on the context. People are still getting to grips with this. We don't want to exclude the use of any of the new social media but we do have to have a very clear idea of what the context is going to be like."

COI's decision comes one week after New Media Age reported that Vodafone, The AA, First Direct, and others were pulling their ads on Facebook because they appeared on the Facebook page of the British National Party, a highly controversial political organization.  Last week, Vodafone released a statement saying:

"We advertise our products and services across a wide range of on and offline publications... In the case of online, bundles of space are purchased across a number of sites including the social networking sites. As a result we were not aware that a Vodafone ad would appear next to a British National Party group on Facebook.

Our Public Policy Principles state that we do not make political donations or support particular party political interests and therefore to avoid misunderstandings we immediately withdrew our adverting as soon as this was brought to our attention.

We are working with our media buyer OMD to ensure that more robust controls are in place before we agree to any potential re-investment," the statement added."

The concerns raised by organizations like COI and Vodafone are understandable and highlight the need advertisers to have greater control over when and where their paid ads appear.  As far as I'm aware, thus far, website optimization solutions and content delivery platforms are only helping advertisers and marketers understand visitor behavior, segment visitors into groups, and deliver targeted messages that are relevant to specific segments. I'm not aware of any optimization solutions or content delivery platforms that helping advertisers optimize ads and website content so that they're not only relevant to various segments of website visitors but that they're also blocked from appearing on pages that promote or discuss controversial topics.  I'm interested to see who will be the first to make this happen.

Marketers can already test and optimize ads and web content so that relevant messages are delivered to different audiences i.e. (Audience segment A "High value customers" sees Ad #1, Audience segment B "First time visitor" sees Ad #2, etc.).  Similarly, search technology makes it easy to identify controversial key words on web pages (i.e. "BNP," "Political Party," etc.). I can't imagine that it would be too difficult to combine these two technologies to create an ad optimization and delivery network that allows advertisers to deliver blank ads on social media pages that have potentially dubious content, or 'sublease' that ad space on controversial social media pages to less discerning advertisers. 

Instead of simply segmenting users, the ad publishing optimization solution I'd like to see would also segment content.  The ad delivery platform would scan social media pages at regular intervals for controversial words.  If dubious words or phrases that go against a given advertiser's rules of engagement appear, the ad slot could display nothing at all or an ad from another, less discriminating advertiser, who subleases the ad space in cases where the primary advertisers chooses to bow out.  Having a solution like this would allow social media platforms like Facebook to offer a two-tiered advertising platform that offers the ultimate control to Tier 1 advertisers who are willing to pay for it and exposure to Tier 2 advertisers with a smaller budget.

Could this work?  Post a comment with your opinion, and if you don't have a Vox account, email me with your comment, and I'll post it manually.

Over the past couple of months, I've noticed an unusually large increase in the number of my friends and former colleagues based in the UK that are joining Facebook.  The recent surge in popularity of Facebook among my UK friends has me wondering: What lit a fire under so many people in non-overlapping networks to join Facebook at around the same time?  Is it a fluke, or is the flurry of activity the product of something else?  A particular marketing campaign? Increased mentions in the UK press?  Unusually fast spread via word of mouth?  The announcement of new developer network? 

From the outside, I can't point to a particular cause, but one thing is for sure... Facebook newbies are joining at the right time, as the site continues to get a whole lot cooler thanks to the addition of 3rd party applications to Facebook.com.  The economy of 3rd party Facebook applications is now booming.  Developers are going wild, and as a result, Facebook is becoming a much more interesting place to spend time online.

Opening up the Facebook platform was a GREAT move for several reasons:

1. Creating a 3rd party developer network will bring a whole new segment of users to Facebook - developers and those in their networks.
2. The availability of a larger number of applications gives users more reasons to spend time logged on, which in turn increases Facebook's attractiveness to both users and advertisers.
   
3. It creates an economy upon which a larger number of people can benefit.  With Facebook, 3rd party developers have a place to be creative and market their products to a wide and connected audience, without the financial risk associated with going to market on their own.  Facebook users are closely connected to each other, and as a result, good applications have a much greater chance of succeeding quickly through viral marketing.

Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Palm, and others have been benefiting from their investment in Developer Relations for many years.  In most cases, opening up their platforms to developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) increases interest in the said platform, boosts usage scenarios, and generates buzz among press.  In my experience (managing global partnerships with with Windows Mobile Developers for Palm, Inc. for the Treo 700w and Treo 750v launches), besides users, 3rd party developers are some of the best evangelists a company can get.  They're passionate, fiercely loyal, and incredibly vocal.  When a company invests in Developer Relations/ Partner Alliances, giving developers all of the tools/ documentation/ support they require to innovate and profit from development, the results far outweigh the costs.  In sharp contract, when a company doesn't invest significantly enough in 3rd party developers or invests in a program that lacks direction or doesn't provide developers with the basic tools, information, and sales/ marketing channels they need, the results can be disastrous.

So far, it appears that Facebook is doing a great job providing developers with the tools they need.  And, as a result, the market for 3rd party Facebook applications is booming.  A couple of my friends recently developed a Facebook app and based on their experience, development of a Facebook app is easy.  It's been fun to hear about the success of the application and share it with my friends.  I've also enjoyed browsing the Facebook applications catalog.  I recently added a BBC news feed and an app that let's me track which US states I've visited.  What's great about the catalog is that you can read reviews of apps before installing them, and it's quick and easy to remove apps you don't like.   In the future, I'd love to see a Yelp-style star system of reviewing enabled in future generations of the catalog to users help weed through all the apps before making a selection, but the existing catalog is a great 1st generation starting point.

If you're interested in developing a Facebook app, check out Softwaredeveloper.com, who just published a very useful article for developers called "How To Develop a Hit Facebook App: 29 Essential Tools and Tutorials."

While sites like YouTube and many video search engines allow anyone to view videos, other sides like Grouper.com (based in Sausalito, CA and recently purchased by Sony) enable privacy settings.  I also like Grouper because it allows members to add video to any website or their MySpace, Facebook, Y!360, Friendster, and Blogger pages. Plus, with Grouper, users can control privacy settings on specific videos so that they can't be seen by just anyone.

Privacy in video is important - not just because it allows users to control who sees them/ their video, but it also has the potential to give social media companies the ability to add revenue enhancing features to their sites and explore revenue based partnerships.  I was thinking about this the other day with singshot.com, which is kind of like American Idol, but available on-line.  Singshot provides karaoke-esque background instrumentals, and users sing along. The resulting tracks are posted on-line, and members of the public can vote on them and provide feedback.  The downside with the site is that there is NO VIDEO!  Depending on their subscriber numbers, if Singshot were to add video, they may have the potential for a whole new revenue model.  They could continue to let any member of the public listen to and vote on audio tracks, but they could also offer a premium (paid for subscription service), enabling only those who pay to see, vote and comment on video. Alternatively, they could charge performers a subscription fee (which could include the cost of a webcam) to post video in order to get feedback on style, dance routines, etc.

In addition, to allowing personal privacy, social media "privacy" features are attractive to Mobile Operators, who want to differentiate themselves from their competition. Web-based Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) in the social media space who strive for mobile enablement should be thinking carefully about privacy.  In my experience, mobile operators haven't yet seen the potential of social media to increase revenues and user bases.  Therefore, it hasn't been a huge push for mobile enabled social media.  This is changing.  As this change happens, one thing is almost certain, the social media ISVs that win the mobile game will have thought about privacy.  Mobile operators want to differentiate their service offerings from their competition, and in the social media world, one of the few ways to do that is by offering unique content.  Social media ISVs don't want to make custom versions of their software for every OEM and Mobile operator out there because doing so limits the number of users that can interact, which defeats the usefuleness and viral spread of social media - especially social networking AND, it increases the amount of work that goes into software development and maintenance. I think the way to get around this is through privacy. 

By having different privacy settings, users on different mobile networks would be able to see different premium content and features than those on other networks - say videos, etc..  This would mean that members of the "public" would still be able to access specific sites, but they may not be able to "see" or "do" certain "premium" things from their mobile phone without being a "subscriber" to a particular mobile operator or have a particular type of mobile phone.  I'm not advocating segmenting the market in this way, but doing so may be one way to grab the mobile market, which is difficult to penetrate without carrier buy-in.  In my experience, the only way to get mobile operator buy-in is by guarenteeing increased revenue (through increased subscribers and paid-for software/subscription opportunities).