8 ms·

Understanding Like-gate

167 points by bdb 14y ago

wylie 14y ago
This really resonates. I've been integrating Open Graph actions into everything I've built recently because it makes everything more "engaging". I would gladly pay to promote actions my users are taking to their friends, as would many other developers. It seems like the right direction, away from a broadcast model from brands and towards more natural ads.
- fideloper 14y ago
  I'm glad I got in cheap with their stock :D We've implemented Open Graph as well for some brands - It appears as a user action on a brand, instead of the brand directly reaching out. That's an implicit recommendation from a friend - Much more powerful than a branch explicitly recommending themselves.
recuter 14y ago
The Open Graph examples given are: “Bob just watched a video on Socialcam” or “Jane just planned a trip on TripAdvisor”. Even if Bob and Jane are my dearest friends, why should I care? "A large percentage of them are related to ecommerce transactions." This reminds me of a short lived startup called Blippy[1] that attempted to get people to automatically share their credit card purchases. They even got a not insignificant amount of people to share that info -- turns out it just didn't make for a compelling firehose. I would only care about Jane using TripAdvisor if I myself was planning a trip just then, Google works because there already exists an intent to purchase that they funnel to the highest bidder. Open Graph as presented by the OP will just be mostly noisy events from people that I happen to know. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blippy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blippy
- genwin 14y ago
  > Open Graph as presented by the OP will just be mostly noisy events from people that I happen to know. Agreed. Seems the basis is sub-par. It shouldn't be friends, it should be people with similar interests. In college people may largely have similar interests. As adults the interests of friends diverge. This is why I like HN but not FB.
  - rscale 14y ago
    This is why I like Twitter, but not FB. FB is an amalgamation of everyone the user has met. Twitter is a collection of people who interest the user.
- qq66 14y ago
  The fact that many people spend lots of time on Facebook is evidence that there are a lot of people who want to know about Bob's video and Jane's trip.
  - recuter 14y ago
    They want to know about Bob and Jane, not the apps/brands that spam their timelines. Again, Jane is going on a trip, here's the picture album, all of that I might want to know about. The fact that she specifically used TripAdviser would only (possibly) matter to me by a coincidence of fate if I am also about to plan a trip of my own. To put it into cruder terms: if my friend is bragging about a massive dump he took that might be content that I find amusing but the brand of toilet paper he used doesn't enter into it. Or, another way: If Jane was going to post a status update about her forthcoming trip and had such a great experience using TripAdviser that she would mention it of her own accord that is one thing. If TripAdviser just managed to get permission to post to her timeline, that's quite another. They are not equivalent by any stretch of the imagination. And while the former is much more likely to get a reaction from her friends, neither are relevant beyond idle chatter to anybody who is not currently in the market for what TripAdviser offers.
jcampbell1 14y ago
I think he means "Facebook analogue to Google Adwords", not Adsense. Adsense is low CTR / low CPM on non-Google properties.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  It doesn't feel like Adwords either though. It feels more like as though Google were to start selling rankings in organic search results. Of course, Google couldn't get away with that because it would torpedo the quality of their product and erode their market share because search doesn't have strong network effects. It seems like Facebook is betting that the stronger network effects in social will save them from the forces of the free market on this one. I guess we'll see if they're right.
  - brandnewlow 14y ago
    If you concede that many/most people aren't aware that the links in the yellow box atop search results are paid results, then Google is essentially selling the first three spots in its search rankings right now and has been for some time.
    - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
      The organic results are still the organic results. Sometimes the ad links are the things the user is looking for -- and that's great for everybody -- but when they aren't, the organic results are still there to give the users what they want. If you open up all the results to bidding, you can end up pushing the most user-demanded results entirely to the side whenever there are enough advertisers willing to pay money to fill up the entire page, which creates a much more substantial negative impact on the user experience.
    - seiji 14y ago
      Depending on the angle of my laptop screen, I can't always see the yellow. Over the years they've kept making the color lighter and lighter.
newobj 14y ago
I suppose. I got an ad in my feed this morning from "Deals4every1" selling a set of DVDs(!!!) containing a "viral blogging system" howto. This godforsaken thing was right up there with the very worst banner ads.
cargo8 14y ago
I can see the parallel in terms of organic and paid content, but unfortunately as a social-networking medium Facebook's users will probably be much less receptive or happy to see the paid content than Google users. Dalton is right that advertisements that are indistinguishable from content are the best kind of advertisements, but only if they are displayed in a context in which the ad-viewer (read: user) wants to see that. Google has this explicitly tied to a query (and implicitly with previous queries and increasingly with mobile device information, for Google Now). If a user sees an ad on Google it is almost certainly comparable or better than organic results with respect to RELEVANCE TO THE USER, which is what matters. Users express their intent, and Google only shows ads alongside the content that are directly related and aiming to solve the same problem or achieve the same goal. On Facebook, what is the parallel? I'm on Facebook so that I can keep in touch and communicate with my friends. My intent is to see stories about my friends about their social interactions, parties, etc. I want to find something to do and see what they've been up to. I want to see the cool new product they bought in action and pictures from the amazing vacation they took - what I don't want to see is that they bought /something/ from Amazon or that they're planning a trip I'm not invited to. Facebook is about sharing your life, your past, your "timeline", not your purchases and plans.
- victoro 14y ago
  "unfortunately as a social-networking medium Facebook's users will probably be much less receptive or happy to see the paid content than Google users" Google's ad relevance was not always what it is today. As marketers got better and the algorithm improved, the ads gained relevance to the user and became more valuable. In facebook's case, marketers will have to figure out how to create ads that are relevant to the News Feed context rather than the search context, but I don't think that the social context is inherently unusable for ads -- it just hasn't been figured out yet.
  - ThomPete 14y ago
    Googles ad relevance was always in the context of searching. I.e. the user informed google about it's intent. Facebook has no such mechanism and that is it's big problem. IMHO
gojomo 14y ago
Great analysis. 'Like-gate' is a narrow name for the controversy, though, with its political-scandal undertones and narrow focus on 'likes' and FB pages. This same battle is happening elsewhere, like in Twitter's 'omnipresent single column newsfeed' and Google's analogous prime mental real estate. (I don't yet have a more broad and vivid name, but it should evoke the idea that this is a battle to enclose/own/monopolize parts of people's attention/mind/voice, subtly enough they don't recoil away.) I think the 'single column newsfeed' will soon be recognized, despite its usefulness, as a somewhat abusive interface pattern. It artificially heightens the sense of novelty by mixing very unlike (and often repetitive) items. It artificially heightens the sense of urgency with the rapid decay of position down the page. Such 'cognitive sweeteners' bring more attention and excitement in the present but ultimately aren't good for the audience: they're noise rather than signal. Eventually countervailing habits will develop. I wonder if that's what's in it for Caldwell's App.net. Facebook and Twitter can't let users break out of their false-prioritized presentation, without breaking their promotional business models. So anything which better ranks, summarizes, and filters items for a user's attention is a potential threat. Not so on App.net: there you might pay for a less-abusive interface (advanced, non-sugary reading software).
rolux 14y ago
From the article: The best ad is indistinguishable from content We can expect to see Facebook deemphasizing traditional advertising units in favor of promoted news stories in your stream. The reason is that the very best advertising is content. Blurring the lines between advertising and content is one of the most ambitious goals a marketer could have. Bringing earnings expectations into this, the key to Facebook 'fixing' their mobile advertising problem is not to create a new ad-unit that performs better on mobile. Rather, it is for them to sell the placement of stories in the omnipresent single column newsfeed. If they are able to nail end-to-end promoted stories system, then their current monetization issues on mobile disappear. I still hope it's rather their users who will disappear.
dreamdu5t 14y ago
If this is truly Facebook's business model then they are doomed.
jarek 14y ago
I would rather like to note that the noise we're now waging a "war" on was brought on by the very social media providers and advertisers now engaged in conflict over how much eyeballs on the noise should sell for.
ThomPete 14y ago
I "like" Lamborghini! I do so for many different reasons. I love the design, I love fast cars, it signals luxury, it's a classic, I identify myself with the brand and so on. But I will not buy one because I cannot afford it. I suspect I am not the only one, I know it's certainly not the only thing I have liked and so the graph is filled with a lot of "likes" but much fewer potential buyers. In other words advertisers have very little knowledge about whether I am in the market for their product or not. Open Graph is a retrospective tool not a predictive tool. When you check in at a concerts or a restaurant you are already there, the ticket has been purchased, the dinner has been eaten, the means of transportation has been taken. Social Graph know a lot about who you are and who you were, where you are, where you have been, but it knows very little about who you are going to be and where you are headed. In other words Open Graph might know more and more about your history but it knows very little about your future either immediate or long term.... Take in contrast Google. When I search for a product, a service, a restaurant etc. on Google, the chances that I am an interested customer is high. Where a "like" takes very little effort to do, in contrast searching, takes a lot more effort. We do not do it unless it's somehow important and top of mind. Without intent the open graph is blind. Without intent it's almost impossible to distinguish between noise and signal. To repeat. I might like a lot of things but am I going buy any of them? Without a proper search it's hard to detect this intent and to know when a customer is most receptive to sales. This is the primary secret of Googles success. They know exactly when and what you want to buy. They created an ad-network where they make money even when you don't. Where Facebook is merely decentralizing it's ability to collect information about the users, through likes, shares and other means, Google is decentralizing it's revenue model! Therefore the question really is the following: 1) Is Facebook going to turn into a search engine querying outside it's own closed garden? 2) Do Facebook have other tricks up it's sleave we just don't know about. 3) Has Facebook invented some way of extrapolating intent out of the knowledge about our past? To answer the first question first. I don't believe they will at least not in any forseeable future. It would simply be too big of a paradigm shift for them. On the other hand the search they have could certainly be improved. For question number 2) The answer is probably yes. I see them already experimenting with displaying ads at the top of my notificiations.They are on their way with a host of new social buttons. They will allow for you to pay for others to see your posts and so on. But if those are their only tricks for selling to me, then it's also very telling for my question number 3) which would be no. Facebook haven't invented a way to extrapolate intent out of my open graph. Cause if they had they wouldn't have to use bruteforce like they do today. And this is the Achilles heel of Facebook. Without a proper way to locate intent Open Graphs is never going to be a truly successful strategy. I don't think we are missing the bigger point. I think FB will have to find a way to understand my intent and I am not sure they are in a position to do that.
alextingle 14y ago
The problem with this is that both users AND potential advertisers hate it. Facebook users do not want their news feed to be filtered. That's why the UI keeps automatically flipping "Sort: Most Recent" back to "Sort: Most Relevant", and why so many users keep asking how to STOP it. So, FB users want to see the content, and the content providers want them to have it. The only problem is an artificial scarcity created by FB. That will eventually drive users away, to other venues where they can get what they want. By contrast, Google's advertising only adds to users' experience. Users generally accept it, either because it's a mostly harmless distraction, or because it's actually delivering extra content that they would not otherwise have seen.
- unreal37 14y ago
  I disagree that Facebook users do not want their feed to be filtered. It's the difference between 100's of posts I don't care about vs 20 I do. It's analogous to saying Google users don't want their search results to be sorted by relevance. Most Google users NEED Google to sort their search, and Facebook is doing the same thing. And hey, search on Twitter lately? Twitter only shows you SOME of the relevant results in the default view (top results). You have to click "see all" to see them all. Everyone's doing it because it HAS to be done to show you things you are interested in vs spam. And don't you hate how only the best stories appear in the default view of Hacker News? Of course not. You can go to the "new" tab if you want, but most people don't.
  - batiudrami 14y ago
    I don't mind it being filtered, I mind when the filtering gets it wrong. It's frustrating when something that I do care about doesn't get shown, and you only find out about it weeks later - the expectation is that if you're only going to show some stories, they should be the correct ones.
  - alextingle 14y ago
    Facebook users may well NEED their stories filtered, but in most cases they don't realise it. The expectation is that FB operates like a newsgroup or a web-forum, where every post appears in the feed. By keeping the filtering process opaque, FB have concealed the value of what they do, so users don't appreciate it. Now, they are fiddling with the unwanted, secret algorithm in a way that benefits them and hurts users - not a good long term strategy.
JumpCrisscross 14y ago
>"Blurring the lines between advertising and content is one of the most ambitious goals a marketer could have." Removing it entirely is the holy grail. Instead of injecting ads into the news feed, Facebook could selectively promote organic stories that are commercially desirable. For example, instead of Coca-Cola telling you about how amazing Coke is, you would simply have the frequency of stories favourably referencing, or photos subtly portraying, good times with a bottle of Coke. Difficult, but much more powerful and revolutionarily more valuable than old-world advertising.
- unreal37 14y ago
  Imagine if Facebook could recognize that there is a bottle of Coke in a picture, and make sure all the friends of everyone in the picture see the picture in their Timeline ... paid for by Coke.
  - 7952 14y ago
    You would need a human to check that the use of the product is positive.
    - unreal37 14y ago
      If Coke is going to pay $X to guarantee that picture appears in all the friends feeds, perhaps they can spend $X/10 on a human to quickly judge the photo.
  - nealabq 14y ago
    Or if Facebook could find the can of Coke in the picture, brighten the pixels and turn the can so the logo is clearly visible. And add a link where you can gift your friend with a coupon for a free Coke. Or change the can of Coke into a can of Pepsi.
namank 14y ago
The day I have to pay for ANYTHING personal is the day I quit Facebook. Charge corporate customers all you want but if I ever pay as a user, I'm out. Make current free features paid? I'm out. Roll out new features and charge for them? That's fine. M. Zuckerberg seems like a smart guy who is passionate about the product - product guys aren't usually asswipes. Really interested in seeing where this goes. Also, far as I know, there are no proven models for monitizing human interaction in real lide, let alone in the virtual world. Traditionally, we've focused on charging for experience, not interaction.
cousin_it 14y ago
> The best ad is indistinguishable from content No, it's not. "Bob just watched a video on Socialcam" is an ad. I can distinguish it from content just fine.
- lmm 14y ago
  >"Bob just watched a video on Socialcam" is an ad. I can distinguish it from content just fine. So it's not the best ad.

167 points by bdb 14y ago

wylie 14y ago

This really resonates. I've been integrating Open Graph actions into everything I've built recently because it makes everything more "engaging". I would gladly pay to promote actions my users are taking to their friends, as would many other developers. It seems like the right direction, away from a broadcast model from brands and towards more natural ads.

fideloper 14y ago
I'm glad I got in cheap with their stock :D We've implemented Open Graph as well for some brands - It appears as a user action on a brand, instead of the brand directly reaching out. That's an implicit recommendation from a friend - Much more powerful than a branch explicitly recommending themselves.

recuter 14y ago

The Open Graph examples given are: “Bob just watched a video on Socialcam” or “Jane just planned a trip on TripAdvisor”. Even if Bob and Jane are my dearest friends, why should I care? "A large percentage of them are related to ecommerce transactions." This reminds me of a short lived startup called Blippy[1] that attempted to get people to automatically share their credit card purchases. They even got a not insignificant amount of people to share that info -- turns out it just didn't make for a compelling firehose. I would only care about Jane using TripAdvisor if I myself was planning a trip just then, Google works because there already exists an intent to purchase that they funnel to the highest bidder. Open Graph as presented by the OP will just be mostly noisy events from people that I happen to know. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blippy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blippy

genwin 14y ago
> Open Graph as presented by the OP will just be mostly noisy events from people that I happen to know. Agreed. Seems the basis is sub-par. It shouldn't be friends, it should be people with similar interests. In college people may largely have similar interests. As adults the interests of friends diverge. This is why I like HN but not FB.
- rscale 14y ago
  This is why I like Twitter, but not FB. FB is an amalgamation of everyone the user has met. Twitter is a collection of people who interest the user.
qq66 14y ago
The fact that many people spend lots of time on Facebook is evidence that there are a lot of people who want to know about Bob's video and Jane's trip.
- recuter 14y ago
  They want to know about Bob and Jane, not the apps/brands that spam their timelines. Again, Jane is going on a trip, here's the picture album, all of that I might want to know about. The fact that she specifically used TripAdviser would only (possibly) matter to me by a coincidence of fate if I am also about to plan a trip of my own. To put it into cruder terms: if my friend is bragging about a massive dump he took that might be content that I find amusing but the brand of toilet paper he used doesn't enter into it. Or, another way: If Jane was going to post a status update about her forthcoming trip and had such a great experience using TripAdviser that she would mention it of her own accord that is one thing. If TripAdviser just managed to get permission to post to her timeline, that's quite another. They are not equivalent by any stretch of the imagination. And while the former is much more likely to get a reaction from her friends, neither are relevant beyond idle chatter to anybody who is not currently in the market for what TripAdviser offers.

jcampbell1 14y ago

I think he means "Facebook analogue to Google Adwords", not Adsense. Adsense is low CTR / low CPM on non-Google properties.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
It doesn't feel like Adwords either though. It feels more like as though Google were to start selling rankings in organic search results. Of course, Google couldn't get away with that because it would torpedo the quality of their product and erode their market share because search doesn't have strong network effects. It seems like Facebook is betting that the stronger network effects in social will save them from the forces of the free market on this one. I guess we'll see if they're right.
- brandnewlow 14y ago
  If you concede that many/most people aren't aware that the links in the yellow box atop search results are paid results, then Google is essentially selling the first three spots in its search rankings right now and has been for some time.
  - AnthonyMouse 14y ago
    The organic results are still the organic results. Sometimes the ad links are the things the user is looking for -- and that's great for everybody -- but when they aren't, the organic results are still there to give the users what they want. If you open up all the results to bidding, you can end up pushing the most user-demanded results entirely to the side whenever there are enough advertisers willing to pay money to fill up the entire page, which creates a much more substantial negative impact on the user experience.
  - seiji 14y ago
    Depending on the angle of my laptop screen, I can't always see the yellow. Over the years they've kept making the color lighter and lighter.

newobj 14y ago

I suppose. I got an ad in my feed this morning from "Deals4every1" selling a set of DVDs(!!!) containing a "viral blogging system" howto. This godforsaken thing was right up there with the very worst banner ads.

cargo8 14y ago

I can see the parallel in terms of organic and paid content, but unfortunately as a social-networking medium Facebook's users will probably be much less receptive or happy to see the paid content than Google users. Dalton is right that advertisements that are indistinguishable from content are the best kind of advertisements, but only if they are displayed in a context in which the ad-viewer (read: user) wants to see that. Google has this explicitly tied to a query (and implicitly with previous queries and increasingly with mobile device information, for Google Now). If a user sees an ad on Google it is almost certainly comparable or better than organic results with respect to RELEVANCE TO THE USER, which is what matters. Users express their intent, and Google only shows ads alongside the content that are directly related and aiming to solve the same problem or achieve the same goal. On Facebook, what is the parallel? I'm on Facebook so that I can keep in touch and communicate with my friends. My intent is to see stories about my friends about their social interactions, parties, etc. I want to find something to do and see what they've been up to. I want to see the cool new product they bought in action and pictures from the amazing vacation they took - what I don't want to see is that they bought /something/ from Amazon or that they're planning a trip I'm not invited to. Facebook is about sharing your life, your past, your "timeline", not your purchases and plans.

victoro 14y ago
"unfortunately as a social-networking medium Facebook's users will probably be much less receptive or happy to see the paid content than Google users" Google's ad relevance was not always what it is today. As marketers got better and the algorithm improved, the ads gained relevance to the user and became more valuable. In facebook's case, marketers will have to figure out how to create ads that are relevant to the News Feed context rather than the search context, but I don't think that the social context is inherently unusable for ads -- it just hasn't been figured out yet.
- ThomPete 14y ago
  Googles ad relevance was always in the context of searching. I.e. the user informed google about it's intent. Facebook has no such mechanism and that is it's big problem. IMHO

gojomo 14y ago

Great analysis. 'Like-gate' is a narrow name for the controversy, though, with its political-scandal undertones and narrow focus on 'likes' and FB pages. This same battle is happening elsewhere, like in Twitter's 'omnipresent single column newsfeed' and Google's analogous prime mental real estate. (I don't yet have a more broad and vivid name, but it should evoke the idea that this is a battle to enclose/own/monopolize parts of people's attention/mind/voice, subtly enough they don't recoil away.) I think the 'single column newsfeed' will soon be recognized, despite its usefulness, as a somewhat abusive interface pattern. It artificially heightens the sense of novelty by mixing very unlike (and often repetitive) items. It artificially heightens the sense of urgency with the rapid decay of position down the page. Such 'cognitive sweeteners' bring more attention and excitement in the present but ultimately aren't good for the audience: they're noise rather than signal. Eventually countervailing habits will develop. I wonder if that's what's in it for Caldwell's App.net. Facebook and Twitter can't let users break out of their false-prioritized presentation, without breaking their promotional business models. So anything which better ranks, summarizes, and filters items for a user's attention is a potential threat. Not so on App.net: there you might pay for a less-abusive interface (advanced, non-sugary reading software).

rolux 14y ago

From the article: The best ad is indistinguishable from content We can expect to see Facebook deemphasizing traditional advertising units in favor of promoted news stories in your stream. The reason is that the very best advertising is content. Blurring the lines between advertising and content is one of the most ambitious goals a marketer could have. Bringing earnings expectations into this, the key to Facebook 'fixing' their mobile advertising problem is not to create a new ad-unit that performs better on mobile. Rather, it is for them to sell the placement of stories in the omnipresent single column newsfeed. If they are able to nail end-to-end promoted stories system, then their current monetization issues on mobile disappear. I still hope it's rather their users who will disappear.

dreamdu5t 14y ago

If this is truly Facebook's business model then they are doomed.

jarek 14y ago

I would rather like to note that the noise we're now waging a "war" on was brought on by the very social media providers and advertisers now engaged in conflict over how much eyeballs on the noise should sell for.

ThomPete 14y ago

I "like" Lamborghini! I do so for many different reasons. I love the design, I love fast cars, it signals luxury, it's a classic, I identify myself with the brand and so on. But I will not buy one because I cannot afford it. I suspect I am not the only one, I know it's certainly not the only thing I have liked and so the graph is filled with a lot of "likes" but much fewer potential buyers. In other words advertisers have very little knowledge about whether I am in the market for their product or not. Open Graph is a retrospective tool not a predictive tool. When you check in at a concerts or a restaurant you are already there, the ticket has been purchased, the dinner has been eaten, the means of transportation has been taken. Social Graph know a lot about who you are and who you were, where you are, where you have been, but it knows very little about who you are going to be and where you are headed. In other words Open Graph might know more and more about your history but it knows very little about your future either immediate or long term.... Take in contrast Google. When I search for a product, a service, a restaurant etc. on Google, the chances that I am an interested customer is high. Where a "like" takes very little effort to do, in contrast searching, takes a lot more effort. We do not do it unless it's somehow important and top of mind. Without intent the open graph is blind. Without intent it's almost impossible to distinguish between noise and signal. To repeat. I might like a lot of things but am I going buy any of them? Without a proper search it's hard to detect this intent and to know when a customer is most receptive to sales. This is the primary secret of Googles success. They know exactly when and what you want to buy. They created an ad-network where they make money even when you don't. Where Facebook is merely decentralizing it's ability to collect information about the users, through likes, shares and other means, Google is decentralizing it's revenue model! Therefore the question really is the following: 1) Is Facebook going to turn into a search engine querying outside it's own closed garden? 2) Do Facebook have other tricks up it's sleave we just don't know about. 3) Has Facebook invented some way of extrapolating intent out of the knowledge about our past? To answer the first question first. I don't believe they will at least not in any forseeable future. It would simply be too big of a paradigm shift for them. On the other hand the search they have could certainly be improved. For question number 2) The answer is probably yes. I see them already experimenting with displaying ads at the top of my notificiations.They are on their way with a host of new social buttons. They will allow for you to pay for others to see your posts and so on. But if those are their only tricks for selling to me, then it's also very telling for my question number 3) which would be no. Facebook haven't invented a way to extrapolate intent out of my open graph. Cause if they had they wouldn't have to use bruteforce like they do today. And this is the Achilles heel of Facebook. Without a proper way to locate intent Open Graphs is never going to be a truly successful strategy. I don't think we are missing the bigger point. I think FB will have to find a way to understand my intent and I am not sure they are in a position to do that.

alextingle 14y ago

The problem with this is that both users AND potential advertisers hate it. Facebook users do not want their news feed to be filtered. That's why the UI keeps automatically flipping "Sort: Most Recent" back to "Sort: Most Relevant", and why so many users keep asking how to STOP it. So, FB users want to see the content, and the content providers want them to have it. The only problem is an artificial scarcity created by FB. That will eventually drive users away, to other venues where they can get what they want. By contrast, Google's advertising only adds to users' experience. Users generally accept it, either because it's a mostly harmless distraction, or because it's actually delivering extra content that they would not otherwise have seen.

unreal37 14y ago
I disagree that Facebook users do not want their feed to be filtered. It's the difference between 100's of posts I don't care about vs 20 I do. It's analogous to saying Google users don't want their search results to be sorted by relevance. Most Google users NEED Google to sort their search, and Facebook is doing the same thing. And hey, search on Twitter lately? Twitter only shows you SOME of the relevant results in the default view (top results). You have to click "see all" to see them all. Everyone's doing it because it HAS to be done to show you things you are interested in vs spam. And don't you hate how only the best stories appear in the default view of Hacker News? Of course not. You can go to the "new" tab if you want, but most people don't.
- batiudrami 14y ago
  I don't mind it being filtered, I mind when the filtering gets it wrong. It's frustrating when something that I do care about doesn't get shown, and you only find out about it weeks later - the expectation is that if you're only going to show some stories, they should be the correct ones.
- alextingle 14y ago
  Facebook users may well NEED their stories filtered, but in most cases they don't realise it. The expectation is that FB operates like a newsgroup or a web-forum, where every post appears in the feed. By keeping the filtering process opaque, FB have concealed the value of what they do, so users don't appreciate it. Now, they are fiddling with the unwanted, secret algorithm in a way that benefits them and hurts users - not a good long term strategy.

JumpCrisscross 14y ago

>"Blurring the lines between advertising and content is one of the most ambitious goals a marketer could have." Removing it entirely is the holy grail. Instead of injecting ads into the news feed, Facebook could selectively promote organic stories that are commercially desirable. For example, instead of Coca-Cola telling you about how amazing Coke is, you would simply have the frequency of stories favourably referencing, or photos subtly portraying, good times with a bottle of Coke. Difficult, but much more powerful and revolutionarily more valuable than old-world advertising.

unreal37 14y ago
Imagine if Facebook could recognize that there is a bottle of Coke in a picture, and make sure all the friends of everyone in the picture see the picture in their Timeline ... paid for by Coke.
- 7952 14y ago
  You would need a human to check that the use of the product is positive.
  - unreal37 14y ago
    If Coke is going to pay $X to guarantee that picture appears in all the friends feeds, perhaps they can spend $X/10 on a human to quickly judge the photo.
- nealabq 14y ago
  Or if Facebook could find the can of Coke in the picture, brighten the pixels and turn the can so the logo is clearly visible. And add a link where you can gift your friend with a coupon for a free Coke. Or change the can of Coke into a can of Pepsi.

namank 14y ago

The day I have to pay for ANYTHING personal is the day I quit Facebook. Charge corporate customers all you want but if I ever pay as a user, I'm out. Make current free features paid? I'm out. Roll out new features and charge for them? That's fine. M. Zuckerberg seems like a smart guy who is passionate about the product - product guys aren't usually asswipes. Really interested in seeing where this goes. Also, far as I know, there are no proven models for monitizing human interaction in real lide, let alone in the virtual world. Traditionally, we've focused on charging for experience, not interaction.

cousin_it 14y ago

> The best ad is indistinguishable from content No, it's not. "Bob just watched a video on Socialcam" is an ad. I can distinguish it from content just fine.

lmm 14y ago
>"Bob just watched a video on Socialcam" is an ad. I can distinguish it from content just fine. So it's not the best ad.