5 ms·

I've been on FB since the beginning. And I've never clicked on an ad. What makes you think I will to actually buy something? I barely trust Paypal, you think I

by crag 14y ago

I've been on FB since the beginning. And I've never clicked on an ad. What makes you think I will to actually buy something? I barely trust Paypal, you think I'm gonna trust FB with my CC details. You gotta be kidding. There are a few steps FB must do before I'll trust them with anything other than bs about what games I'm playing now: 1. Convince me they take my security and privacy seriously. 2. Convince me they aren't selling my personal data (statistical or not) without my permission. 3. Allow me to export (backup) ALL my data to my drive easily. 4. All me to cancel my account (not that I would). And by cancel I mean remove all my data. No questions, no sales pitches to stay - just delete everything in my profile (and off their, FB, drives). FB says they do this, But there are plenty dead folk with active profiles. Despite families begging FB to delete them. Until all this happens, FB gets nothing from me except an occasional post about my Skyrim adventures. Oh and commenting on the latest high school gossip (the latter being funny. I mean, there's a reason I left town 25 years ago and hardly kept in touch. But here we all are, FB friends.)

omonra 14y ago
You seem to conflate [1 - what I want FB to do with regards to privacy] with [2 - what FB needs to do so I trust they won't steal my money]. The two have nothing to do with each other. Realistically speaking, 1 may never happen, 2 is already there (even if you're only liable for $50 from unauthorized cc transactions).
- ktizo 14y ago
  3. What facebook needs to do so I trust that other people can't steal my money through facebook.
  - jusben1369 14y ago
    If you're entering a CC then it's not your money that's on the hook.
- Zak 14y ago
  What if what I spend my money on is private? I don't really want my spending habits to be social.
iamben 14y ago
But you probably don't represent the average Facebook user. Most of my non-tech friends share everything - FB knows pretty much everything about them, and certainly for some of the younger ones, FB has become their primary communication platform. For most of them, paying with Facebook would just be easier than using something else / remembering more details etc etc. And they probably trust FB more than they trust other companies with far less visibility (although most them have used their CC without any thought or concern on a load of different websites). FWIW and personally, I completely echo your thoughts - although I'm sure I'd end up giving my CC details to FB as soon as a website that I needed to buy from offered no other method to pay than the FB one.
Omnipresent 14y ago
You might not trust FB with your CC info but elderly/non tech savy people will. Remember, there is less of us and more of them. Point is to capture a bigger market, which clearly trusts FB with their most intimate details then why not CC?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- redthrowaway 14y ago
  My bank limits me to 8 alphanumeric for online access. It's pretty pathetic. On the plus side, it's shorter than any of my other common passwords, so I'm not tempted to reuse it. I can say with certainty that my banking password is not in any DB on the tubes save my bank's.
batista 14y ago
>I've been on FB since the beginning. And I've never clicked on an ad. What makes you think I will to actually buy something? FB has several billions of revenue from ads. What makes you think you are not an insignificant outlier and that this move or any other doesn't concern you? Just think people, if everybody did what I do on FB, would FB still exist? If the answer is no, then what you might or might not do, doesn't matter with regards to FB.
- pessimizer 14y ago
  Most people don't click on ads, but the minority that do can generate billions of dollars of revenue. The minority that do follow the ones that don't.
  - sanswork 14y ago
    A recent report showed that the minority that click ads at facebook is pretty close to half. Not a bad minority to have using your site.
    - smsm42 14y ago
      Could you please provide a link to the report? 50% click rate is insanely high, nobody has that. It would be very interesting to know how Facebook achieved such miraculous performance.
      - batista 14y ago
        >Could you please provide a link to the report? 50% click rate is insanely high, nobody has that. It would be very interesting to know how Facebook achieved such miraculous performance. He is not talking about 50% click rate. That is, he's not talking about 1 ad. He says that 50% of FB users have clicked on ads at some point in their FB use. Which might, or might not be true, but is not the same as "50% click rate".
        smsm42 14y ago
kunaalarya 14y ago
FB allows you to buy gift cards from stores for credits, so for an outlier that doesn't trust Facebook with cc details, there's another option. Through buying Karma, they can bring gift giving into Facebook credits, so for someone's birthday you can buy a gift card through Facebook, and you can take your phone to the store and use your gift. This has tons of potential and you can for even more through Facebook. Think of buying tickets for events, or going to a small business' store and buying an item (Etsy style). Or Etsy, Amazon, eBay, etc setting up apps where you can use Facebook credits to buy (long term). I have two cousins visiting from India, and it's amazing watching them use Facebook. They're constantly on. Using it to connect with friends, play games, etc. This is a whole market the most people don't think of. These markets are huge. And as another user pointed out, all these kids using Facebook these days are growing up with it and will continue to use it, and trust it. It's a whole different experience that we don't really see.
snowwrestler 14y ago
I've never clicked on a Facebook ad either, but I've run ads on Facebook and they got clicked a lot. The cost per new user was lower than Google Adwords. I'm not sure it's a good idea to dismiss Facebook's chances at making money from ads yet. I've never clicked on a TV ad either, but stations make hundreds of billions of dollars from those ads every year. That industry took many decades to grow to that point though.
- tatsuke95 14y ago
  It's not whether Facebook makes money off the ads. We know they do. It's whether the advertisers make money from the ads that will demonstrate if there is a sustainable business model there.
27182818284 14y ago
>I've been on FB since the beginning. And I've never clicked on an ad. What makes you think I will to actually buy something? I'll offer a counter anecdote. I've been impressed by their targeted ads more than once and clicked! It has to get hyper-specific though. Not like gender-targeting, for me it read that I liked linguistics at one point in my profile and offered me an add to by a Wug shirt. I was super impressed and spent time in their online store.
smsm42 14y ago
I'm definitely not gonna trust FB with credit card or anything private. It is a company built on sharing, with repeated history of privacy issues. It's one thing posting there about my vacation and what I think of latest Hollywood blockbuster and quite another to give them a line to my bank account. For the latter I would rather have some company that has better privacy traditions.
- reneherse 14y ago
  Precisely. The ethos of the Facebook notion of sharing and privacy is antithetical to what a financial service needs to have. One big reason I trust Paypal for everyday transactions is because they make money off of each transaction directly, whether through direct fees or merchant fees. I can understand their business model, and the service has a certain simplicity. The OP wants me to give financial data to a company where my data is their product, and who is always trying to prise more "openness" from me through a byzantine privacy UI and borderline surreptitious app installations? I'll pass, thanks.
thomasluce 14y ago
>I barely trust Paypal, you think I'm gonna trust FB with my CC details. You gotta be kidding. Trust isn't as big of a deal as you might think. People think it matters a lot in business because it matters in your day-to-day life with in-person interactions. The fact of the matter, however, is that many people who don't trust things still use them. I don't trust my government, but I still pay my taxes and use the clean water they pipe to my house. I don't trust most banks, but I still use their CC processing networks. Plenty of people don't trust BP (and oil companies in general) but still drive internal-combustion cars. More and more people every day don't trust Foxconn, but still buy all the gadgets they produce. Trust matters when you are dealing with something non-ubiquitous; you don't need to use it, so if you don't trust them you don't use it. However, if something goes main-stream (like credit-cards), and the interaction is practically forced on you (like taxes) then people use it without trust. Facebook as it stands right now is testament to that. I don't trust them _at all_, but am forced to use it because friends, family, and groups I personally value use it in a way that requires me to as well. If they launch a payment processing system that even only a quarter of their users are willing to use, that is enough market share for websites to start using it, which is free advertisement for the system, gaining more users. How long before sites that _only_ take facebook pay crop up (in the same way that some sites _only_ use paypal; a company plenty of people don't trust, but are forced to use)? How long before some site that provides a service that you depend on?

by crag 14y ago

omonra 14y ago

You seem to conflate [1 - what I want FB to do with regards to privacy] with [2 - what FB needs to do so I trust they won't steal my money]. The two have nothing to do with each other. Realistically speaking, 1 may never happen, 2 is already there (even if you're only liable for $50 from unauthorized cc transactions).

ktizo 14y ago
3. What facebook needs to do so I trust that other people can't steal my money through facebook.
- jusben1369 14y ago
  If you're entering a CC then it's not your money that's on the hook.
Zak 14y ago
What if what I spend my money on is private? I don't really want my spending habits to be social.

iamben 14y ago

But you probably don't represent the average Facebook user. Most of my non-tech friends share everything - FB knows pretty much everything about them, and certainly for some of the younger ones, FB has become their primary communication platform. For most of them, paying with Facebook would just be easier than using something else / remembering more details etc etc. And they probably trust FB more than they trust other companies with far less visibility (although most them have used their CC without any thought or concern on a load of different websites). FWIW and personally, I completely echo your thoughts - although I'm sure I'd end up giving my CC details to FB as soon as a website that I needed to buy from offered no other method to pay than the FB one.

Omnipresent 14y ago

You might not trust FB with your CC info but elderly/non tech savy people will. Remember, there is less of us and more of them. Point is to capture a bigger market, which clearly trusts FB with their most intimate details then why not CC?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

redthrowaway 14y ago
My bank limits me to 8 alphanumeric for online access. It's pretty pathetic. On the plus side, it's shorter than any of my other common passwords, so I'm not tempted to reuse it. I can say with certainty that my banking password is not in any DB on the tubes save my bank's.

batista 14y ago

>I've been on FB since the beginning. And I've never clicked on an ad. What makes you think I will to actually buy something? FB has several billions of revenue from ads. What makes you think you are not an insignificant outlier and that this move or any other doesn't concern you? Just think people, if everybody did what I do on FB, would FB still exist? If the answer is no, then what you might or might not do, doesn't matter with regards to FB.

pessimizer 14y ago
Most people don't click on ads, but the minority that do can generate billions of dollars of revenue. The minority that do follow the ones that don't.
- sanswork 14y ago
  A recent report showed that the minority that click ads at facebook is pretty close to half. Not a bad minority to have using your site.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    Could you please provide a link to the report? 50% click rate is insanely high, nobody has that. It would be very interesting to know how Facebook achieved such miraculous performance.
    - batista 14y ago
      >Could you please provide a link to the report? 50% click rate is insanely high, nobody has that. It would be very interesting to know how Facebook achieved such miraculous performance. He is not talking about 50% click rate. That is, he's not talking about 1 ad. He says that 50% of FB users have clicked on ads at some point in their FB use. Which might, or might not be true, but is not the same as "50% click rate".
      - smsm42 14y ago

kunaalarya 14y ago

FB allows you to buy gift cards from stores for credits, so for an outlier that doesn't trust Facebook with cc details, there's another option. Through buying Karma, they can bring gift giving into Facebook credits, so for someone's birthday you can buy a gift card through Facebook, and you can take your phone to the store and use your gift. This has tons of potential and you can for even more through Facebook. Think of buying tickets for events, or going to a small business' store and buying an item (Etsy style). Or Etsy, Amazon, eBay, etc setting up apps where you can use Facebook credits to buy (long term). I have two cousins visiting from India, and it's amazing watching them use Facebook. They're constantly on. Using it to connect with friends, play games, etc. This is a whole market the most people don't think of. These markets are huge. And as another user pointed out, all these kids using Facebook these days are growing up with it and will continue to use it, and trust it. It's a whole different experience that we don't really see.

snowwrestler 14y ago

I've never clicked on a Facebook ad either, but I've run ads on Facebook and they got clicked a lot. The cost per new user was lower than Google Adwords. I'm not sure it's a good idea to dismiss Facebook's chances at making money from ads yet. I've never clicked on a TV ad either, but stations make hundreds of billions of dollars from those ads every year. That industry took many decades to grow to that point though.

tatsuke95 14y ago
It's not whether Facebook makes money off the ads. We know they do. It's whether the advertisers make money from the ads that will demonstrate if there is a sustainable business model there.

27182818284 14y ago

>I've been on FB since the beginning. And I've never clicked on an ad. What makes you think I will to actually buy something? I'll offer a counter anecdote. I've been impressed by their targeted ads more than once and clicked! It has to get hyper-specific though. Not like gender-targeting, for me it read that I liked linguistics at one point in my profile and offered me an add to by a Wug shirt. I was super impressed and spent time in their online store.

smsm42 14y ago

I'm definitely not gonna trust FB with credit card or anything private. It is a company built on sharing, with repeated history of privacy issues. It's one thing posting there about my vacation and what I think of latest Hollywood blockbuster and quite another to give them a line to my bank account. For the latter I would rather have some company that has better privacy traditions.

reneherse 14y ago
Precisely. The ethos of the Facebook notion of sharing and privacy is antithetical to what a financial service needs to have. One big reason I trust Paypal for everyday transactions is because they make money off of each transaction directly, whether through direct fees or merchant fees. I can understand their business model, and the service has a certain simplicity. The OP wants me to give financial data to a company where my data is their product, and who is always trying to prise more "openness" from me through a byzantine privacy UI and borderline surreptitious app installations? I'll pass, thanks.

thomasluce 14y ago

>I barely trust Paypal, you think I'm gonna trust FB with my CC details. You gotta be kidding. Trust isn't as big of a deal as you might think. People think it matters a lot in business because it matters in your day-to-day life with in-person interactions. The fact of the matter, however, is that many people who don't trust things still use them. I don't trust my government, but I still pay my taxes and use the clean water they pipe to my house. I don't trust most banks, but I still use their CC processing networks. Plenty of people don't trust BP (and oil companies in general) but still drive internal-combustion cars. More and more people every day don't trust Foxconn, but still buy all the gadgets they produce. Trust matters when you are dealing with something non-ubiquitous; you don't need to use it, so if you don't trust them you don't use it. However, if something goes main-stream (like credit-cards), and the interaction is practically forced on you (like taxes) then people use it without trust. Facebook as it stands right now is testament to that. I don't trust them _at all_, but am forced to use it because friends, family, and groups I personally value use it in a way that requires me to as well. If they launch a payment processing system that even only a quarter of their users are willing to use, that is enough market share for websites to start using it, which is free advertisement for the system, gaining more users. How long before sites that _only_ take facebook pay crop up (in the same way that some sites _only_ use paypal; a company plenty of people don't trust, but are forced to use)? How long before some site that provides a service that you depend on?