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"Basically everything in FB has one main goal: Ads" Is this actually true, or a glib answer? Ads certainly don't feel like much of the FB experience, nowhere n

"Basically everything in FB has one main goal: Ads" Is this actually true, or a glib answer? Ads certainly don't feel like much of the FB experience, nowhere near the level of Google, or even Twitter. They're negligible, really. Whereas shaping the feed and identifying people in pics, etc, is central to the FB experience.

raverbashing 12y ago
Not necessarily Ads in the traditional sense, but FB also sells content reach (Promoted Content) and targeting Shaping the feed is certainly one part of it. But I guess that part of the success of FB is that they don't make it, as you said, not make the ads feel as much part of the experience.
kylestlb 12y ago
Someone with more context can answer this better but I would guess that selling behavioral data to ad agencies is a thing?
samolang 12y ago
Agreed. You can't show ads unless you have users. Optimizing advertisements is definitely second fiddle to optimizing the user experience.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Ads certainly don't feel like much of the FB experience, nowhere near the level of Google, or even Twitter. Facebook creates an artificial distinction between labeled ads (which are, of course, obvious ads) and posts with paid reach (which are also ads, but presented as normal content), exactly for the purpose of maximizing the quantity of ads while minimizing the impression of content being dominated by ads.
- WillNotDownvote 12y ago
  Right, so ads don't feel like much of the FB experience. My point is that FB seems much, much more focused on creating an engaging user experience than it does on ads, so it seems wrong to say that their deep learning efforts have ads as their one main goal.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Right, so ads don't feel like much of the FB experience. Right, but the issue was the claim that with FB everything is about ads, not the UX feels like it is about ads. Making ads not feel like as much of the FB experience as they are is, itself, about ads -- and, particularly, is about maximizing the degree to which the FB experience is actually about ads.
    - WillNotDownvote 12y ago
      "Making ads not feel like as much of the FB experience as they are is, itself, about ads..." Well, we just disagree here. I see it from exactly the other end. That the main FB goal is to engage users, and minimizing the (necessary, but grudgingly so) ads is about that.
    - unclebucknasty 12y ago
      I think the answer is both-and vs. either-or. FB's bait is user engagement. So, applying machine learning to the goal of engaging users makes sense. But, to monetize that user-engagement they, of course, use ads. Applying machine learning directly there makes sense too. Beyond that, it's just semantics. Yes, one could accurately say that everything FB does is about ads because, ultimately, they are a for-profit company which derives its revenue from advertising. In that way, the ultimate goal of all of its activity is aimed at generating ad revenue. But, that doesn't mean that every single activity or bit of technology that supports that activity is directly tied to driving ad revenue. That is to say, that if FB featured no advertising but, instead, charged users, they would still likely deploy machine-learning to user-engagement and, thus, customer-retention.
  - hueving 12y ago
    What it feels like to the user doesn't matter. They are still maximizing their ad revenue.
    - malnourish 12y ago
      What it feels like to the user is vital. The AI is probably to find the most engaging way to display ads. More engagement with ads == high ad valuation.
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choppaface 12y ago
Categorization is critical to boosting precision in information retrieval tasks. Deep networks for cropped object recognition are an important source of (inferred) content categories (especially when other context, e.g. photo captions, are not useful). While a good image categorizer would be very useful for ad targeting and auctions, the technology can also boost precision for news feed, graph search, etc., which improves user experience.

raverbashing 12y ago

Not necessarily Ads in the traditional sense, but FB also sells content reach (Promoted Content) and targeting Shaping the feed is certainly one part of it. But I guess that part of the success of FB is that they don't make it, as you said, not make the ads feel as much part of the experience.

kylestlb 12y ago

Someone with more context can answer this better but I would guess that selling behavioral data to ad agencies is a thing?

samolang 12y ago

Agreed. You can't show ads unless you have users. Optimizing advertisements is definitely second fiddle to optimizing the user experience.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> Ads certainly don't feel like much of the FB experience, nowhere near the level of Google, or even Twitter. Facebook creates an artificial distinction between labeled ads (which are, of course, obvious ads) and posts with paid reach (which are also ads, but presented as normal content), exactly for the purpose of maximizing the quantity of ads while minimizing the impression of content being dominated by ads.

WillNotDownvote 12y ago
Right, so ads don't feel like much of the FB experience. My point is that FB seems much, much more focused on creating an engaging user experience than it does on ads, so it seems wrong to say that their deep learning efforts have ads as their one main goal.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Right, so ads don't feel like much of the FB experience. Right, but the issue was the claim that with FB everything is about ads, not the UX feels like it is about ads. Making ads not feel like as much of the FB experience as they are is, itself, about ads -- and, particularly, is about maximizing the degree to which the FB experience is actually about ads.
  - WillNotDownvote 12y ago
    "Making ads not feel like as much of the FB experience as they are is, itself, about ads..." Well, we just disagree here. I see it from exactly the other end. That the main FB goal is to engage users, and minimizing the (necessary, but grudgingly so) ads is about that.
  - unclebucknasty 12y ago
    I think the answer is both-and vs. either-or. FB's bait is user engagement. So, applying machine learning to the goal of engaging users makes sense. But, to monetize that user-engagement they, of course, use ads. Applying machine learning directly there makes sense too. Beyond that, it's just semantics. Yes, one could accurately say that everything FB does is about ads because, ultimately, they are a for-profit company which derives its revenue from advertising. In that way, the ultimate goal of all of its activity is aimed at generating ad revenue. But, that doesn't mean that every single activity or bit of technology that supports that activity is directly tied to driving ad revenue. That is to say, that if FB featured no advertising but, instead, charged users, they would still likely deploy machine-learning to user-engagement and, thus, customer-retention.
- hueving 12y ago
  What it feels like to the user doesn't matter. They are still maximizing their ad revenue.
  - malnourish 12y ago
    What it feels like to the user is vital. The AI is probably to find the most engaging way to display ads. More engagement with ads == high ad valuation.

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choppaface 12y ago

Categorization is critical to boosting precision in information retrieval tasks. Deep networks for cropped object recognition are an important source of (inferred) content categories (especially when other context, e.g. photo captions, are not useful). While a good image categorizer would be very useful for ad targeting and auctions, the technology can also boost precision for news feed, graph search, etc., which improves user experience.