Facebook targeted advertising

I have been slightly wary of the whole targeted ads on Facebook thing - I wasn't sure how it was going to affect my use of it or whether it would actually work. However, an ad appeared on my home page today which made me stop and thing - wow, that's clever!

As some of you may no I am engaged to be married, and my Facebook status reflects that. The ad (as you can see) was for weddings abroad. Facebook obviously knows I'm engaged but can't know that we are actually planning to get married abroad (can it...!?!) but the effectiveness of this ad on the long tail of Facebook engaged users who are thinking about getting married abroad (and I know of at least two other couples who are) must be highly effective. I'd be fascinated to know what the click-through rate is.

Not only is this idea very clever, it's also exceptionally simple. I saw a video of Facebook's presentation to the advertising community when they launched this feature - and it's as simple as providing the image, the link to your site, and then filter the people who you want to see it. In this case - where status = engaged! Must have taken the company under 30 seconds to set this campaign up...

So - what's Google going to do about it?

Gullible Facebook users

A while back, when email started to get really popular, there was a large amount of "manual viruses" that went round. You would receive an email that went along the lines of

"Microsoft has today released a warning about the xyz virus. This is a very harmful virus that will automatically send itself to everyone in your Inbox. Please forward this mail to everyone you know so that they do not open an email with the subject xyz".

The virus usually didn't exist. What did everyone who received it do? Forwarded it to everyone in their contacts list which is exactly what the virus was purported to do. There were some amusing ones which claimed it would send your ex-girlfriend your new phone number etc. There is a good summary of these hoaxes here.

If they wern't playing on the fear of catching a computer virus, they played on the emotional heartstrings - sign this petition to end cruelty to women under the Taliban etc. The irony is that these particular petitions are often designed to disrupt an email address - so when everyone forwards their 'signature' onto the (sometimes genuine) email address (in the Taliban case someone with the title Special Advisor on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women) which is either non-existent or worse, floods the Inbox and actually prevents the Special Advisor from doing his or her job.

Soon - most people got wise to the idea - then web site phishing came along where people were asked to give their bank (or, more likely, eBay) login details, and again, people got wise to it.

Why, then, are people again falling for Facebook hoaxes which are breathtakingly not possible. As with the email ones they play on fear and emotional blackmail. Eg a recent popular post on Funwall is around a gang initiation in London whereby gangs drive around with their lights off and have to shoot the driver of the first car to flash them. Obviously you have to pass this on to your friends and tell them not to flash anyone who has their lights off. This warning claims to come from various sources, one of which is the London Ambulance Service who posted this denial on their website. There are various others claiming that Make A Wish foundation will donate 7 cents every time a message of support for a sick child is passed on. Just think for a second. Why would they do this? How would they know how many times it has been passed on? Is this really the best way to support Make A Wish foundation?

The craziest one yet is a post alleging to be from Mark Zuckerberg himself (therefore it must be true!) This is worth reproducing in its entirety:

Attention all Facebook membeRs.
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you're active please send
to other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active
Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,
The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,
If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send
this message to show me that your active and not deleted.

Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg

Where do we start with this? Facebook is becoming slow because of inactive members???? Just think about this for one second. Why is your gym busy? Is it because of all those people who have joined and don't show up? And Facebook don't know who is active and who is inactive? And the best way they have of determining this is for you to send a message to other users and send a copy to Mark? Why do you need to send it on to all your friends? And why is it going around Funwall? Can't Facebook just put a message in everyone's Inbox? And are you seriously telling me Facebook can't tell which users are active? Back to the gym, don't you think that they might know who comes in and out of the building for marketing purposes? How does Facebook make its money? Advertising. Who is active and what they are looking it is the most valuable piece of information Facebook holds. Without it, they'd lose money.

Oh, and of course, they'll delete your account in 2 weeks. Even if you've been away on holdiay for two weeks and not logged in. That will go down well with their users. Doesn't anyone remember the phishing scams of a few years ago "we'll close your bank account unless you send us your username and password within 48 hours". Of course, the irony is I have seen some walls with this posted 6 or 7 times. Don't these people see that by doing what they are doing they are contributing to the problem?? No wonder Facebook has been so slow recently...

Backfiring blogs

Last week there was a story about Glen o'Glaza's post on the Adam Boulton Sky News blog. In the post he complains about the conditions for journalists during their trip with Gordon Brown to Iraq. There seems to have been quite a backlash to his complaints, many comparing his conditions with those endured by the soldiers on the ground. There are two points to make here:


1) Sky have done the right thing by keeping the posting up after the negative publicity. To take the post down after it had been reported in the press would have been a mistake, as people searching for it and finding it had been removed would probably have imagined it to be worse than it was!

2) It is absolutely vital when writing blogs that you know your audience. o'Glaza probably had a certain audience in mind when we wrote the post who would be sympathetic. However, on a public blog you cannot target your posts so that only certain people will read it - the whole point is that it is there for the world to see.

Part of the reason we talk so much at Trovus about the importance of a blogging strategy and a content strategy is that blogs can ruin brands and reputations just as easily as they can make them. Blogs are a tool amongst many other marketing tools - it is how you use them that makes the difference and potentially allows you to differentiate substantially from your competitors.

Is social networking the right term for the boardroom?

Something I have been thinking recently, does the term 'social networking' turn off the boardroom because of the word 'social'? Ask a CEO if he needs social networking and the answer is probably no. Ask him if he needs his staff in the US to be able to access the tacit knowledge of staff in China and he might say yes, but use the term 'social networking' at your peril as it translates as 'Facebook' which translates as 'timewasting'.

What sort of networking ever happened that wasn't social anyway?

How important are computer skills in the workplace?

There is an article on the BBC News website about how IT skills are valued in the boardroom. A study by Microsoft shows that IT skills were seen as the seventh most important skill, behind skills such as team working, interpersonal skills and initiative. Bill Gates challenges this, claiming that IT skills were needed from the shop floor to the Chief Executive.

I have a feeling that this may be a case of Gates and UK Boardroom using the same words but meaning different things by them. Some IT skills have become so common that they are not really seen as IT skills. When being asked the question, did the UK boardrooms surveyed consider the ability to use email and a word processor as an IT skill? Would the board consider employing individuals who could not these basic tools - and worse refused to because it was IT and they didn't understand it? Only recently I was debating with a group of friends what "being in IT" means. Does it mean you are in the IT department? Does it mean you are a programmer? Does it mean you can code HTML and write a website? Or update a blog? Or use a computer in your job?

Skills listed as important ahead of IT were those such as teamworking, analysis, planning and flexibility. The IT can be core to succeeding in all of these - try analysing and planning without a spreadsheet or project management tool, try teamworking without staying in touch via email and try being flexible without the technology to work from home.

In the end, IT skills will never be valuable in their own right, however they will be essential to achieve all the skills that deliver true value to a business, and therefore to an employee.

Serena Software adopts Facebook Fridays

This caught my eye recently, amongst all the press about companies banning Facebook and it being generally bad for productivity and business, Serena Software has launched Facebook Fridays. The idea is that for one hour every Friday employees should spend time on Facebook, collaborating with colleagues and customers and recruiting. Interestingly, the approach includes one of the key components to a successful internal collaboration project, which is sponsorship. Not just in terms of warm words, but actual engagement from senior management. In this case, a Senior VP and the CEO are using their profiles on Facebook as an example of what they are looking for from their staff.

This sounds similar in philosophy to Google's 20% time, where engineers are encouraged to spend 1 day a week on projects they find interesting. "Encourage" is probably the wrong word, it's actually part of their performance review, so it's almost mandatory! Could this happen at Serena? Employees being reviewed on how they have used Facebook in an innovative way to recruit someone to the company, collaborate with an employee or customer? You could imagine that if someone refused to use email it would be brought up during an appraisal, so how long until using social networking sites becomes as key a skill as using Office or Outlook?