Facebook decides to bastardize its community

Facebook on Tuesday announced its new advertising offerings. They seem pretty cool from a marketing perspective but have an underlying creepiness that should make users feel uncomfortable.

As CNET New.com's Caroline McCarthy writes:

Called Facebook Ads, the new program is threefold: Advertisers can create branded pages, run targeted advertisements, and have access to intelligence and analytics pertaining to the site's more than 50 million users. Partners can participate in all three components of Facebook Ads, or a combination of them.

Sounds good right? Who wouldn't want to target that active, young user base?

Additionally, Facebook has unveiled targeted advertisements that will allow marketers to target by any information inside Facebook profiles, from relationship status to favorite television shows.

Yikes, this is the part that freaks me out. Wasn't it just last month that we all enjoyed the Facebook privacy scandal? Kinda makes you wonder how it was able to develop algorithms for advertising that sound so detailed, doesn't it?

I already feel paranoid and exposed as a blogger, but the idea that my casual and personal details and conversations can end up as advertising dollars is freaky and unnerving. I also don't want to know if some kid I went to middle school with is buying a boat or adult diapers on Amazon.

One thing we've learned in open source is that you must grow a community of users that support your product and sustain themselves. To maintain that community you have to avoid hyper-aggressive marketing. In fact, if you look at the forums or mailing lists of the majority of open-source companies, it's difficult to find anyone marketing (at least not overtly) to their user base.

You can't bastardize your community or the community will disappear. This is something that I would have expected a site that relies on user-generated content to know.

I have to assume that the sheer size of the user base means that Facebook can do things like this with less impact. I also have to assume that it calculated the risks associated with such an aggressive program. So far it's not clear if/how one can opt out or what the data usage policy is.

Facebook has been fortunate to develop a huge user base and it's still early enough to introduce this new advertising without major impact. On the other hand, users are extremely fickle and there are a wide variety of alternative social networks.

[dcholloway]

What about the positive aspects?

You bring up some valid points, but for some reason you totally fail to acknowledge the potentially positive side-effects of a better targeted marketing campaign within Facebook.

Surely you are a consumer, and surely you would benefit from getting discounts on things you already buy, right?

What you're effectively accomplishing with this post is fear mongering about privacy violations that have yet to even occur.

I'm right there with you, though; I'm also a Facebook user and I don't want to know about who's buying adult diapers and so on. And I also want to know that my data is being respected, and to have some control over how it's being used. Everything should be opt-in/opt-out, and if certain ads (in the News Feed or elsewhere) annoy or offend me, I want to be able to prevent them from showing up again.

But I would like some good discounts, and maybe even some other monetary rewards for cooperating with companies I already do business with. Isn't that worth something to you, too?

I posted about this in my blog http://quantumcreative.blogspot.com if you'd like to read or comment more on my opinions regarding what's going to happen.

[DrtyDogg]

Is it really that bad

or is it similar to the way google ads work, trying to show a relevant ads based on keywords that show up in the page. In other words do advertisers get to see indidvidual profiles and select them or do they select a few keywords to advertise to and if it happens to be on your page ? ? ?

[Dazz123C]

Choice must be given

Personally I wouldn't mind this if there is actually discounts in relevant products i might be interested in. i mean target marketing already exists in the real world, this facebook idea is based on the same theory but just applying a new method. As i say, i'm all for this as long us as individuals benefit in someway e.g. Supermarkets use the club card scheme to monitor your purchase habits and target you & your consumer group more effectively, but you get something back in the form of points allowing you to get discount in store, obviously though the supermarket is benefiting more greatly than yourself from such a scheme otherwise they wouldn't be doing it!

BUT people should have the choice, as with the supermarkets you don't have sign up for a Clubcard. In addition, most online retailers give you the option to prevent them contacting you via email about their offers and distributing your details/data to Third Parties - there should be something similar if facebook go ahead with a scheme of this sort.

[dr.enton]

perhaps repeats a bit of the other comments but...

...this is exactly how Gmail works - What Facebook needs to do is assure their patrons that the personal information that connects their Facebook account with their flesh and blood (i.e. email address, mobile number) is not included in their plan. Go ahead and advertise London hotels deals to me if I say I'm going to London - but don't email or text them to me! That is the line they must not cross with advertisers.

[kiwi_mccake]

Profile is not conversations

Your conversations are not going to be used, it mentioned profile details. They are quite different. So a listing of liking "Origami" will send an advert at the top, but talking about it to a friend won't.

And there is no real fuss from me if some algorithm is looking at random words i type to make adverts. It is not like some sort of sweatshop where someone makes a decision what to send me, just automated process.