Slide 5 “The College Addiction” talks about the addictive nature of Facebook.
Using the word addiction must have been a sound sales pitch in the early days. An expression that has quickly been replaced by technical terms like ‘engagement’ and ‘retention’.
> Slide 5 “The College Addiction” talks about the addictive nature of Facebook.
> Using the word addiction must have been a sound sales pitch in the early days. An expression that has quickly been replaced by technical terms like ‘engagement’ and ‘retention’.
> Using the word addiction must have been a sound sales pitch in the early days.
Yes, it used to be a positive thing, eg, "So good/fun you'll get addicted". I haven't thought about addictinggames.com for maybe a decade but it seems like they're still around.
The top comment there[1] describe use of ad in such a wholesome way that I almost cried. Don't even know why it effected me so much. Is this what facebook ads should have been? People advertising to each other rather than companies advertising to people? Another question which poped in my head is would this lead to more or less data gathering? To target in such a hyper localized way can either be done with a lot of info or in a less intrusive way by just looking at the buyer's social graph.
I'm assuming that all of those targeting factors match up to the user-provided info in their profile. So for instance "house/dormitory" was probably a profile field back in 2004.
Kind of reminds me of how Google started selling ads, just buy a keyword, that's it. And the CPM was determined by bidding (though I'm not sure how you make that fair)
Well, in the same slide deck it talks about how it recorded the users last access location and "the site has a built-in database of school dormitories and halls". Is it possible that the site was able to automatically determine what hall/dorm you were in depending on your network connection?
Actually yes, now that I looked at dang's link to the same post discussed previously on HN, that's exactly what they were doing: determining dorm/hall based on IP address and other stuff.
So my comment was dead wrong. I'm sorry for assuming that facebook ever regarded its users as anything other than "dumb fucks" that they could track as they please.
I realise I’m probably not in a majority here on this one but: I’m not offended or too bothered by being targeted by ads on Facebook.
What I am offended by however is how poor the targeted ads are on Facebook. I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything based on one or even been tempted to.
This ! Looking in from the other side..Im usually appalled at how bad their advertising is from an advertisers point of view. I tried to target ppl for 'broadband options', Thus one might expect the lead to have a house(not own just a roof over his head) , He might liked netflix and streaming and certain modern games. The amount of basically 'homeless ppl' liking the ad is amazing ! Like the bulk genuinely just look like fake profiles !
Maybe I'm weird, but I don't mind ads being targeted to me based on any info that I choose to make publicly available. If I have to see ads, at least give me relevant ones.
I know Facebook goes well beyond that into some pretty creepy territory, but that's not what I'm talking about.
I mostly agree. I don't have a problem getting some ads targeted based on the info I provide. What I DO mind is FB following me all around the web, so the one time I was bored and randomly clicked on some cheesy ad for something I would never buy, FB has decided I must love that and show me tons of retargeting or related ads.
The thing that is so f*ing frustrating about both FB and Google is they could provide REALLY good targeted ads by only looking at stuff I provide (e.g. my submitted profile info, my search keywords). Instead they have to track everything I do to squeeze an extra X% out of their conversion numbers.
Most of the info is not publicly available but collected by inferring information about based on the pages you visit, who you talk and which other users you associate with.
I think that is in reference to Facebook mining your DMs and web searches, neither of which are viewable to your FB friends or other internet users at large. FB accesses any and everything they can regarding your browsing behavior and ends up with far more data about a user than what is displayed publicly on the user’s public profile.
You are not the first to react with this cognitive dissonance.
What if you don't have to see ads?
Your reasoning depends on a presupposition that has been sold to you by Facebook and the tech industry that survives on ad spend.
If you read the terms on the Facebook website it says, paraphrasing, "Facebook shall always remain free". It is not free of course, for its customers.
The rationale Facebook offers for why it muct be free is something like "it must be free so Facebook can be available to people in poorer countries as a means of communication". Eeven if that were a reason, it is not a rationale why it must be free for Americans.
The truth is actually that you are not Facebook's customer, unless you are buying ads or promotions. They can only charge customers. In order to lure in subjects (particpants) for the customers to advertise to, Facebook creates a website and gives participants their own pages where they can share photos, etc. and communicate with each other.
Even particpants in clinical trials or other research studies get paid. Facebook should be paying you for being part of their experiment.
If we market those "products and services" to which you refer -- I suspect they are not the ad services sold by Facebook -- on their own, what are they worth?
More cognitive dissonance.
People do not pay to particpate in research studies, even though they may get some "free stuff" in the course of participating in the research.
The Facebook "service" is market research and advertising services. Whatever "free stuff" participants may receive in the course of participating is not "products and services" the research sponsor (advertisers), Facebook or anyone else can sell. No one would pay.
Facebook users agree to be studied and marketed to by advertisers. As the participants, are providing Facebook with value. They are allowing Facebook to conduct market research and collect the data.
If we subtract the Facebook customers - advertisers - then there is no paying customer. Development, maintenance and hosting are expenses necessary to provide the service of conducting the research and services for the paying customer. Users are not Facebook's customers.
It matters little if any user says that Facebook has "value" when that same user would also refuse to pay to be a participant in Facebook's research on behalf of advertisers (research sponsors). Whatever "free stuff" users are getting by participating is not worth enough that they would pay for it.
Communicating and sharing through websites is valuable. We pay for internet access so we can do that, among other things. Facebook is just an implementation detail.
tbh there was much more creepiness when somebody on your campus could run searches of your campus based on this information, which round about that time they still could. Still, knowing this I left the sexual orientation and relationship status in the profile...
As for ads, it was funnier when they ignored much of that available information. Seems hard to believe now but there was a long time when Facebook ads was a sidebar consisting of poorly targeted dating website ads.
Using the word addiction must have been a sound sales pitch in the early days. An expression that has quickly been replaced by technical terms like ‘engagement’ and ‘retention’.