In April, Facebook held its annual developers conference in California. Most of the buzz coming from this even has centered on the company’s efforts to redouble its efforts on creating an open network of integration with sites across the web. To summarize the initiative, participating sites will automatically recognize Facebook users, and any time a Facebook user goes to a page on their site, they will see which (if any) of their friends has interacted with the page before.
Yelp, for example, will automatically recognize who I am when I enter their site, and will be able to show me specific recommendations and reviews from my friends for restaurants, services, local businesses, and the like.
As a Facebook user, I’m excited by the potential applications of this development. I agree with company founder Mark Zuckerberg that “[the] flow of social information has profound benefits—from driving better decisions to keeping in touch more easily.” Stripped of the social media jargon, the point here is that the new system will allow me to easily and efficiently share anything I find particularly noteworthy, useful, or entertaining (from anywhere on the web), with anybody in my social circle.
But as a professional in the internet marketing space, I bring another perspective to the new initiatives. I will address my skepticism in a moment, but first, I’d like to offer a few thoughts on what is going on here.
For one thing, it is clear that this is all part of the natural maturation for Facebook–having grown to a goliath in the social media space, it is now time for the company to start buckling down and making money. I suspect that they, like Google, understand that this will mean attracting businesses of all sizes to advertise to their users.
And because the main competitive advantage that Facebook can offer is what appears to be valuable information about users, the company is banking on getting even more information about all of our activity online.
Zuckerberg’s company has obviously known for quite a long time that Google’s billions are the result of converting a small amount of basic information of a user at one point of her interaction with the internet (a search query), into valuable online advertising space. It appears, then, that the thinking in Palo Alto is now that Facebook can take much more in-depth knowledge about its user to create more valuable ad space.
Some of the reaction in the mainstream press has been extremely positive. At Slate, Farhad Manjoo suggests that the potentially massive data set can surpass Google both in size and influence. Others have predictably (and possibly unjustifiably) suggested that this raises categorically different privacy concerns.
Whatever their opinion, however, there are a lot of people talking about this initiative. And as always happens in our industry, this buzz will likely lead to a whole lot of business owners and other potential advertisers to unwisely push for Facebook integration.
I say ‘unwisely’ because it doesn’t seem too likely that Facebook’s core model-the sharing of information among social groups-can encompass so much of what Google and other search engines can do so well.
Most obviously, there is virtually no evidence (at this point) to suggest that Facebook can work as an effective tool for B2B marketing. Or for the marketing of consumer goods that are not experiential or positional.
In other words, if you are selling a vacation, running a restaurant, or managing a band, then social marketing is right up your alley. By their very nature, each of these businesses are the kinds of things that Facebook users want to share with one another. We want to tell our friends about the trip we just took to an exotic locale, or the fabulous prix fixe we just had.
But who is really keen on pressing the ‘Like’ button for a components manufacturing company? Or for a consumer packaged good?
And if the public isn’t particularly interested in interacting with, and sharing, a brand, Facebook will have a tough time providing valuable ad space for such a product.
Think of it this way: if you are trying to promote a convenience store, would it be more valuable to you to find users who ‘Like’ 7-11, or who are querying Google Maps for “gas stations 60647″?
None of this is meant to suggest that Facebook itself is misguided in its pursuit of increased information from the worldwide social graph. Nor do I mean to say that the new features won’t immediately result in valuable opportunities for certain experiential or positional goods providers. But it will take a lot of evidence to make a case that Facebook is a better marketing platform for everybody else.
After all, it is worth noting that there aren’t any case studies for toothbrushes on Facebook’s own advertising page.
