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this is the same crap we used to hear about myspace and friendster. Techcrunch needs to lay off the crack...facebook might be a billion dollar company...it mig

• ditoa 16y ago
  To play devil's advocate here do you have any evidence that Google's model generates higher return, click thru or revenue? To me it seems like Facebook is the best long term business model. Slowly, as you and your friends update every bit of your life, where you are, what you are doing, who you are with, etc. they can have a massive amount of data to target you with. Google basically made Gmail just so they could mine more data from your email to better target adverts. Facebook may have found the golden needle in the haystack if they evolve the business correctly which it looks like they will. Look where they are taking things with places, etc. Google can target you and the people who email you but there isn't a permanent link between you and the recipient(s) whereas with FB it is a chunky sold gold chain linking you together in every way they can think of from things you "like", wall posts, comments replying to you, comments you make, invites you get, invites you accept, places you go, who you go with, when you go, how much you spend, monitor you behaviour via status updates. They will know you go out every friday night with the same three friends to one of two bars or clubs, you then go and add photos to FB when you are there and label everyone in the pictures, the location either specifically or via geotag, etc. Google may have a lot of your data but FB is the holy grail and every business needs to think about how they can get in on the action. Google tried with the piece of crap Buzz was and the crappy Orkut that they bought but let it die when FB exploded. Soon FB will be as well known as Coca Cola and used by everyone. FB is the first service my mum, dad, grandma, aunt, uncle, etc. use. It isn't just a "under 30s" thing, literally everyone can and seem to be using it. Facebook is going to only get bigger and they have such a high userbase now it is hard to see how anyone else will replace them. They saw what happened to MySpace, they are smart and have learnt from others mistakes. Just my 2c though :)
  • nostromo 16y ago
    We tried FB ads at a company I've worked for. The return was so bad we canceled the whole campaign. Compare that to Google SEM, which is the largest channel by far. FB may have a ton of data about you, but no amount of demo data can beat a person who searches for "i want to buy x" when you're selling x. Interestingly, Google has had the same difficult time monetizing gmail (compared to search), even though they are targeting based on the content of your inbox.
  • JeffL 16y ago
    I've also tried both Google and FB ads (among other), and FB returns me next to nothing. I also don't spend money with them anymore.
• revorad 16y ago
  The funny and scary point this post made was that maybe (just maybe) Facebook is bringing back the inefficient TV ads that Madison Avenue loves in the form of Facebook banner ads. Facebook ads might make more money than Google ads precisely because their effectiveness cannot be measured (just like TV and billboard ads). Sure, engineers will cite poor CTRs but "brand managers" will be eager to dismiss that as oh-so-2001. They are not buying clicks, they are creating "brand awareness on the largest website on the internet".
  • pkaler 16y ago
    Madison Avenue is about demand generation not demand harvesting. You can't market to people that don't realize they have a problem or a need. You could invent the wheel and there will be no demand to harvest because everyone has always dragged their dinner back to the cave. A caveman will never do a Google search for a wheel.
    • il 16y ago
      FYI, it is impossible for any single company to generate demand, they can only create products that meet existing demand. Demand rises organically over time through the combination of all market forces, cultural trends, etc. Trying to educate a market that they need your product is a losing proposition. Trust me.
      • dtby 16y ago
        I'm not sure what your claim is here: "Say's Law is hokum." or "Marketing is bunk."
        • il 16y ago
          Neither? Judging from the downvotes my comment has been misunderstood. My job is marketing, so I know better than to say it's bunk. For those who still don't understand, here's what Eugene Schwartz, one of the greatest marketers of all time says: "What are you doing when you market something? You are not creating demand for a product. If you think that you are creating demand for your product, you’ve doomed yourself to a lifetime of hard work and failure. You can’t create demand for anything because demand is too large for you to create. The demand has to be out there. The demand has to exist before you even walk into the picture...You cannot create demand. You can only channel demand. Demand is there. Demand is enormous. The bigger the demand, the better your ad is. You are getting in a boat and letting the stream carry you. Just don’t think that you can paddle up against the stream."
• kristiandupont 16y ago
  It's true that Google has this advantage, but facebook has another one: "Hey, your friends x and y like these widgets".
  • redorb 16y ago
    if FB started selling products using my name based on me liking producst; I won't be happy. i.e. don't try to sell my mom a playboy cause I 'fan'd' their page.
    • Joeboy 16y ago
      That's not likely to happen because Playboy's ads will presumably be targeted at (a subset of) men. Anyway, FB doesn't need you to be happy. What are you going to do, move to MySpace?
      • notahacker 16y ago
        Stopping using the "like" button so as not to give them usable data would be the first step... - Facebook's bigger problem is that their "platform" strategy makes it pretty easy to monitor these metrics and target fans without paying Facebook a penny. Essentially they traded potential revenue streams for ubiquity. Getting a "x and y like this" published in friends of fans' streams is a free action, as is collecting demographic information on the "likers" and sending them all coupons they have to "like" to activate. Established brands can generate better ROI from well-run fan page promotions they don't pay Facebook for than paid display ads with low CTR.
• ramanujan 16y ago
  I believe this is a failure of imagination. Facebook Credits will be their Gmail, the second act which shows that they are something special. Blippy, Groupon, and others are all in the general area of "social purchasing" but FB will simply dominate this when they enter the game. In a down economy, if you can get a discount by simply sharing or liking, you will. And advertisers can micro target not just demographics, but influencers within those demographics, people who are disproportionately effective in passing on memes -- and buy messages -- to their friends. (Parenthetically, this also means people will visit Facebook for product search, buoying the overall commercial intent of the site. And an endorsement by a friend of something carries even more weight than a good Amazon reviews.)
  • ollerac 16y ago
    Sounds cool, but I think these innovations would transform my idea of what Facebook is into something like how I think of Craigslist or Groupon. Right now Facebook is where I go to see what my friends are up to. I think adding movie reviews, product recommendations, etc. might dilute its brand and its addictiveness factor -- in fact, I think they already have. Some commercial-type messages have already started diluting my news feed a little bit. Google, despite having relevant ads in its sidebar, is still just a search engine.
  • rebelvc 16y ago
    Paying users to spam facebook will not work in the long term.
• pkaler 16y ago
  The rate of return is a lot worse with Facebook, because you can only target by demographics...not intent Facebook will harvest much more intent than they do today. There will be many cases where "Ask your friends/experts" is much better than "Ask PageRank". We are seeing this with knowledge exchange sites like Quora and we will eventually see this with Facebook Questions. And this will seep into all of Facebook's Apps. Google is having a hell of a time trying to monetize YouTube. They just aren't as good with display advertising. YouTube would be a massive revenue generation engine if Facebook owned it. Look for a Facebook Video that becomes huge. Facebook will also turn into a massive lead generation engine based on Connect and Pages. Run the numbers for social distribution. You can do customer cluster acquisition through social distribution. With SEM you can only acquire a user at a time. When you acquire a customer through a social network, they are more likely to lead to referrals than a user acquired through search engine marketing. Comparing MySpace to Facebook does not follow. MySpace has massive leadership and execution issues. Facebook is probably the best executing pre-IPO company out there.
  • vaksel 16y ago
    spoken like someone who is a "social media expert" look this whole Facebook is the future of search is just plain nuts. People want instant results, they don't feel like asking "what colors does the Honda Civic come in?". The answer to that will be "use the search"
    • pkaler 16y ago
      spoken like someone who is a "social media expert" I resent the ad hominem attack. I happen to have a computing science degree from when they used to actually teach Lisp in university. look this whole Facebook is the future of search is just plain nuts. I said no such thing. It's more like we will see the rise of sort because Facebook and other services (Hunch, Quora, etc) have access to much more structured information.
      • dododo 16y ago
        I resent the ad hominem attack. I happen to have a computing science degree from when they used to actually teach Lisp in university. many universities still do teach Lisp (in AI courses, for example). this seems like an attempt to appeal to authority, which is another logical fallacy...
• dinkumthinkum 16y ago
  I think the big problem with this idea is that Facebook is far more vulnerable to changes in fads and so forth than Google is. For the forseeable future we will need something like Google and Google will probably continue to stay on top (if they don't keep putting out Google Instants) but Facebook could much more easily be hit hard by a new social networking paradigm or some kind of fad change. Also, interestingly, it seems like probably the vast majority of Facebook's users use Google but converse is probably not true.
  • photon_off 16y ago
    Google will probably continue to stay on top (if they don't keep putting out Google Instants) Google Instant only gains Google dominance. You may not like it, but some people do. That adds to Google's stickiness; those people are now much less likely to switch search engines. If the $.12/query rate is to be believed, that stickiness is extremely valuable in the long run. As for those that do no prefer Instant, I suspect they didn't have any trouble disabling it. As a nice little bonus, Google gained notoriety for their Instant search. This means anyone else who implements it in the future will be riding in Google's coattails, and will be much less likely to realize the positive effects that Google did. If it were up to me, I'd have Google churning out more of these features. I believe it's already the case that "search" is a commodity, and it's now the bells and whistles that are the point of competition. Google already has a huge head start, and they now need to maintain it.
• Goladus 16y ago
  Facebook has penetrated much further than myspace or friendster. My Facebook friends span several generations. I was skeptical of Facebook, I didn't think they'd pull it off. I still don't think they will be quite as ubiquitous as Google, but also I don't think that is going to matter. And whether they "beat" google or not is rather beside the point. Facebook doesn't compete with them on search, except for people search.
• deleted 16y ago
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