Apr
23
new sources digested
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What went wrong with friendster? by Max Chafkin, Inc.com June 2007
Friendster has become a case study at Harvard as a model of how not to manage a tech company. Abrams says the failure was result of mismanagement and because he embraced a system that created far more failures than successes. Venture capitalists adopted a system to invest in 20 businesses expecting to have 2 successes. ” In the old days entrepreneurs would bootstrap and figure things out over the first few years.
Friendster came as an idea to Abrams to portray a offline life in an online world. Each user would have a standardized homepage that would link to the profiles of their friends creating a network. The idea seemed great, perhaps even better than some dating sites because of the network aspect. Every time a new user joined the network friendster calculated network wwithn four degrees of separation. They began having problems with loading times and the software needed to be reworked. However he ignored these problems thinking they would solve themselves.
Hired some VC’s that had some ideas to make the company as big as possible fast. They had to compete with myspace and facebook. One day he realized that thousands of the users were from southeast asia. This essentially meant they were paying millions of dollars advertising to the wrong people. From here it went downhill and myspace took off.
They were kicking themselves about missed opportunities like not incorporating music and videos. Also the functionality of inviting people and companies to groups
Apr
21
Revision Plan
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As of right now I am very unhappy with what I have on Facebook advertising. It was really hard to just get a solid 6 pages written solely on Facebook advertising. I think that I made my research topic too narrow and I need to open it up into a broader subject, maybe social network advertising vs traditional advertising techniques.
On second thought, If I did a better job of developing the subjects I did discuss and go into more detail, I could likely squeeze another couple pages out of it. My plan is to go back through my paper rebuilding an outline for it. Once all the subjects are written in order I can see where there is room for development.
Apr
21
rough draft
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Advertising on Facebook; the Future of Marketing
by Pete Todaro
April 16, 2008
ENGL 202 9:05
Dr. Kenneth Sherwood
Over the past year, the social networking site Facebook has evolved from a simple social utility open only to college students to the newest stage to advertise from. The site is currently estimated at $15 billion. The website has developed an entirely new method of advertising through social network relationships and personal user information compiled in a data base. The aggressive and intrusive advertising methods have begun to discourage facebook users from logging on. Some feel offended that a site originally made for people to communicate to their friends turned into a site suited for advertisers to communicate with consumers. At the same time, this type of advertising has not yet found a way to truly become profitable for the parties involved.
It was only about three years ago when I gave in and agreed to set up a facebook profile. I had been resisting the social network sites because I figured I was just a fad. So ahead I went filling in all my personal information devil may care. My friends and I had just started our first semester at IUP and we wanted to meet all the hot college chicks, so I put a lot of stuff that would make girls think I was cool. My interest column included my love of bullfighting as well as my devotion to rock-skipping. With so many details about my personal life to fill in on my profile page, I wondered why anyone would really care about it. It turns out I was contributing to building the next biggest advertising boom of the century.
Mark Zuckerberg gave birth to the social network site as a project at Harvard University; he later dropped out to manage his business. It moved from Harvard to every college across the nation. The exclusivity of the site was what made it different from its competitor, MySpace. After a short period of steady growth, the social network opened up to high schools, then businesses, then anybody who had an email address. I think this was about the time when Mark Zuckerberg realized the money making possibilities of his site.
On August 22, 2006 Facebook and Microsoft joined forces giving Microsoft rights to running banner ads and sponsored links. At the same time, Zuckerberg and co. were preparing to unveil “news feed” and “mini feed”, which published stories about what users were doing on the website. In Zuckerberg’s own words, “All the most interesting stuff that is going on is now presented to you. The analogy would be instead of an encyclopedia, it’s now news. We’re emphasizing what’s going on now (Shmidt).” The homepage was now filled with stories about who is in a relationship with whom, what somebody wrote on their friend’s wall and the like. As a result of this invasion of personal space, users quickly banded together in opposition to the changes. Groups with names like “Official petition against news feed” sprung up all over the network within 24 hours (Shmidt). Despite the initial reluctance to accept the new format of the website, naysayers soon quieted down and the news feed became a permanent addition to the site. I wonder if the new strategies of targeting advertisements would have come about had the news feed not been accepted.
Open APIs
The introduction of news feed was the first act of intrusiveness that would set the stage for later actions to target advertisements at people based on their personal information. In February of 2007 Facebook announced that it would be opening up their application program interface (API) to third party developers. The purpose of this move was to attract more users to the site with fun applications that give the user something more to do than browse profile pages. “In tech jargon, these are called API’s [application program interface], and they’re the software hooks used by developers to build new applications that can communicate glitch-free with existing programs (Karif).” People began adding applications to their profile as fast as third party developers could make them. With Facebook users busily playing with their new top friends or friend gifts applications they increased the amount of time spent on the site daily. More time on the site translates into more ads seen which equals more ad revenue for Microsoft and Facebook. Google, Microsoft’s rival, released their own open API’s for development of its social network site Opensocial. This is significant because Opensocial is now capable of diverting web traffic from Facebook and making profit. (Booth) This was a smart move for Opensocial because applications assist in attracting more users and increasing ad revenue because it makes the website more useful.
Project Beacon
In November of 2007, Facebook came out with Project Beacon as a way to tie all the third party developers together with third party advertisers and the news feed. With this new program, third parties give information about what a user buys in return for a back link to their site in the news feed. This was the first news that project beacon was building a data base of user purchasing information. Facebook wants to know about their users purchasing history so that it can deliver custom fit advertisements to users that are likely to buy the product. “There are at least two pieces to the network. One is getting more data in about what users do when they aren’t at Facebook, allowing for far more targeted advertising. The second is running those ads, perhaps even off the Facebook network itself.” (Arrington)
There are a lot of things about this program that the public is unhappy about. For one, people do not want a story in the news feed about them buying something embarrassing from the internet. I wouldn’t want people to know that I bought the Back Street Boys greatest hits album from amazon.com at 11:30 PM. Second of all, it just feels like an invasion of privacy when Facebook tells all of their 500 friends about what they are doing in their personal lives.
Some people are doing more than just getting angry, they’re filing lawsuits angry. Blockbuster is currently being sued by a Texas woman for its participation in project beacon. The woman filed the lawsuit on the grounds that it is a violation of the Video Privacy Protection act of 1998. The woman feels that Blockbuster should not be allowed to share her videotape rental history with facebook without getting her permission first. (Vijayan) Blockbuster could have seen this lawsuit coming when it signed on with Facebook to participate in project beacon. James Grimmelman, an associate professor in New York Law School, pointed out that the mere fact that Blockbuster passed on movie choice information to Facebook was a violation of the law regardless of whether or not that information was shared with others on the news feed. (Vijayan)
Keep in mind that not all Facebook users are in outrage against this program. With privacy controls users can make the decision to opt-in or opt-out of allowing this information to be published in the news feed. The problem when beacon was first released was that it was an opt-out system and if a user didn’t decline to share the information Facebook went ahead and shared it. The system was then changed to be opt-in. There are even new plug-ins that give users control to choose what cookies to delete. (Havenstein)
Business Deals
There is a lot of competition going on between Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo to invest in the internet advertising market of Facebook. Google owns the majority of internet advertising, while Microsoft owns the rights to advertise on Facebook in the United States. Microsoft recently outbid Google and paid $240 million to Facebook for rights to run banner ads outside of the United States. The relevance of this astronomical price tag for only a 1.6% stake in the company is that Microsoft fears it is going to lose out on the social network market to Google. It is becoming a personal feud for Microsoft to block Google’s plans at any cost. (Stone)
Advertising successes and failures
Despite all of the hype that social networking advertising is the best thing to invest in, some advertisers are struggling to turn a profit because of low user response. Mars Celebrate is a great example of a successful Facebook application. Mars Celebrate allows users to send their friends candy from their profile page. The user pays via a PayPal account and a message is sent to the friend. The friend enters their mobile phone number and an SMS barcode is sent to their phone so that they can redeem it at any local store. (Jay) The Mars Celebrate application is a modification on the earlier application, Facebook gifts, which allowed users to send virtual presents to friends’ profiles. The success of this application was most likely due to the personal friend aspect of it. They see the application not as just a way to sell candy bars, but as an easy way to do something nice for a friend which is important. However, just because sending gifts of candy is popular, it doesn’t mean that there is much of a future for this type of advertising.
The makers of Slide, producer of web application called widgets, are addressing the problem of internet advertising being too aggressive at times and scaring the public away. Widgets are mini slideshows that appear on web pages to show advertisements. Surveys indicate they reach a fifth of all internet users. In a new approach being used by Slide to get their widgets seen by more people, they are making it possible to download custom shows and add them to your profile. (Morrissey) It is likely that this personal approach to widget advertising will result in more people seeing and clicking on their widgets. “Its alternative offers users the option of downloading branded skins on their photo slide shows, displaying their affinity for movies and series like Discovery’s Last Man Standing. AT&T Wireless has also signed on to sponsor a slideshow that will play a ringtone when a user lands on the page.”(Morrissey) The key to being successful in this quickly evolving business of internet advertising is to constantly be trying new approaches. Slide cannot tap into the advertising market of MySpace because it is not open to third party developers yet. This is something that they should think about doing if they don’t want to become a thing of the past.
MySpace
There is some evidence emerging that suggests Google is losing money paying for the rights to run ads on MySpace. “The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months, according to market researcher ComScore”(Ante) The response rate for these ads is very low, making it hard to generate revenue. Some feel that the market for advertising on social network sites is never going to be really profitable and that they are overhyped. Others think that they just haven’t come up with the right ideas to make it profitable yet. Many business owners have stopped advertising on MySpace because of declining profits. The president of video game publisher, green screen, stopped advertising on MySpace last spring because of a 13-in-10,000 response rate. “It’s really hard to make money on that anemic click-through rate,” says Seremet.(Ante) There needs to be more innovation in order to really make profits in targeted advertising. The more aggressively the ads are targeted at the consumer the more the people become resistant to using social networking sites. Many people are leaving MySpace just because they are sick of how ridiculous the advertising is getting. The number of MySpace users has dropped from 72 million users in October of 2007 to 68.9 million in December. (Ante)
Works Cited
Morrissey, Brian. “Can Slide Balance User-Ad Seesaw?.” Adweek 48.29 (06 Aug. 2007): 11-11. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Stapleton Library, Indiana, PA. 9 Apr.2008.
Jay, Rufus. “Real Facebook Shop in Virtual World Breathes Life Into Mars.” Marketing Week. 31.7 (21 Feb. 2008): 14-14. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Stapleton Library, Indiana, PA. 27 Mar. 2008.
Ante, Spencer E., and Catherine Holahan “Generation MySpace is Getting Fed Up.” Business Week. (18 Feb 2008): 54-55. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Stapleton Library, Indiana, PA. 27 Mar. 2008.
Karif, Olga. “Social Network Sites Open Up.” Business Week Online. (13 Feb. 2007): 10-10. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Stapleton Library, Indiana, PA. 30 Mar. 2008.
Booth, Nick. “Google Coding Tools Open Alternatives to Facebook.” Computer Weekly. (13 Nov. 2007): 14-14 Business Source Premier. EBSCO Stapleton Library, Indiana, PA. 2 Apr 2008.
Stone, Brad. “Microsoft to Pay $240 Million for Stake in Facebook” The New York Times. 25 Oct. 2007. 2 Apr. 2008. <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/technology/24cnd-facebook.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>.
Arrington, Michael. “Ok Here’s At Least Part of what Facebook Is Announcing on Tuesday: Project Beacon” Online Posting. 2 Nov. 2007. TechCrunch. 3 Apr. 2008. <http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/02/ok-heres-at-least-part-of-what-facebook-is-announcing-on-tuesday/>.
Shmidt, Tracy S. “Inside the Backlash Against Facebook.” Time. 6 Sep. 2006. <http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1532225,00.html>.
Vijayan, Jaikumar. “Blockbuster Sued over Facebook Beacon Information Sharing.” 18 Apr. 2008 http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=standards_and_legal_issues&articleId=9078938&taxonomyId=146
Havenstein,Heather. “New plug-in gives Facebook users another way to dodge Beacon.” 11 Apr. 2008 <http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9077178>
Apr
17
first 2 pages of draft
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Advertising on Facebook; the Future of Marketing
by Pete Todaro
April 16, 2008
ENGL 202 9:05
Dr. Kenneth Sherwood
Over the past year, the social networking site Facebook has evolved from a simple social utility open only to college students to the new stage to advertise from. The website has developed an entirely new method of advertising through social network relationships and personal user information compiled in a data base. The aggressive and intrusive advertising methods have begun to discourage facebook users from logging on. Some feel offended that a site originally made for people to communicate to their friends turned into a site suited for advertisers to communicate with consumers. At the same time, this type of advertising has not yet found a way to truly become profitable for the parties involved.
It was only about three years ago when I gave in and agreed to set up a facebook profile. I had been resisting the social network sites because I figured I was just a fad. So ahead I went filling in all my personal information devil may care. My friends and I had just started our first semester at IUP and we wanted to meet all the hot college chicks, so I put a lot of stuff that would make girls think I was cool. My interest column included my love of bullfighting as well as my devotion to rock-skipping. With so many details about my personal life to fill in on my profile page, I wondered why anyone would really care about it. It turns out I was contributing to building the next biggest advertising boom of the century.
Mark Zuckerberg gave birth to the social network site as a project at Harvard University; he later dropped out to manage his business. It moved from Harvard to every college across the nation. The exclusivity of the site was what made it different from its competitor, MySpace. After a short period of steady growth, the social network opened up to high schools, then businesses, then anybody who had an email address. I think this was about the time when Mark Zuckerberg realized the money making possibilities of his site.
On August 22, 2006 Facebook and Microsoft joined forces giving Microsoft rights to running banner ads and sponsored links. At the same time, Zuckerberg and co. were preparing to unveil “news feed” and “mini feed”, which published stories about what users were doing on the website. In Zuckerberg’s own words, “All the most interesting stuff that is going on is now presented to you. The analogy would be instead of an encyclopedia, it’s now news. We’re emphasizing what’s going on now (Time).” The homepage was now filled with stories about who is in a relationship with whom, what somebody wrote on their friend’s wall and the like. As a result of this invasion of personal space, users quickly banded together in opposition to the changes. Groups with names like “Official petition against news feed” sprung up all over the network within 24 hours (Time). Despite the initial reluctance to accept the new format of the website, naysayers soon quieted down and the news feed became a permanent addition to the site. I wonder if the new strategies of targeting advertisements would have come about had the news feed not been accepted.
The introduction of news feed was the first act of intrusiveness that would set the stage for later actions to target advertisements at people based on their personal information. In February of 2007 Facebook announces that it will be opening up their application program interface (API) to third party developers. The purpose of this move was to attract more users to the site with fun applications that give the user something more to do than browse profile pages and join groups. “In tech jargon, these are called API’s [application program interface], and they’re the software hooks used by developers to build new applications that can communicate glitch-free with existing programs (Business week online).”
Apr
17
Additional sources digested
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Digesting Sources
Real Shop in Facebook World Breathes life into Mars. 2/21/08 Marketing Week.
New application on facebook, Mars Celebrate, allows users to send friends candy. The user pays via PayPal account and a message is sent to the friend. The friend enters their mobile phone number and an SMS barcode is sent to their phone so that they can redeem it at any local store.
People Quoted in the Article:
Lynette Cowan- Client Services director at the Light Agency
Developed Mars Celebrate, says “We began talks with Mars’ Agency Mesh marketing about a facebook sweetshop and they thought it was a perfect match” “It has to be the right brand to fit” – packaged goods
Henry Ellis- head of social media at search conversion agency Tamar
“Its at the mercy of the social graph as well. If Paris Hiliton had launched an application like this it wouldn’t have worked because people don’t like her, but people like Mars”
Blake Chandlee- Facebook UK commercial director
If a brand picks up on a consumer advocacy group that’s targeting them early enough, they can manage that in a much better way.”
Mark Charkin- Bebo’s UK head of sales
“If brands stamp in and try to force sales, it wont work”
“Just because virtual gifts are a success doesn’t mean gifts in an offline environment will work.”
“Sectors like DIY and finance are really looking to add value…You could develop a budget tracker application and off the back of that reinforce your brand. This could potentially lead to cross selling.”
Stone -Microsoft to pay $240 million for stake in Facebook
Stone, Brad. “Microsoft to pay $240 million for Stake in Facebook.” The New York Times. October 25, 2007.
About: This newspaper article discusses the importance of Facebook as a new operating system to run targeted advertising. The author talks about the feud going on between Google, which owns the majority of the internet advertising rights, and Microsoft, who fears they might lose control of the next generation of computer users.
Audience: This article was probably written for people interested in investing into some of these internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Myspace, The News Corporation)
Relevance: The relevance of this is that Microsoft was willing to pay a lot of money for a small part of this website because of fear of losing out on the market in the future.
Key Quotations: “The high valuation also represents a belief that Facebook is creating an important new operating system — one that exists on the Web instead of on personal computers. In May, it opened its platform, inviting other companies and third party developers to create tools for the site and share in the advertising revenues.”
“Facebook boosters say that social networking represents the future of online activity. Advertisers are attracted to these properties because they offer an opportunity to aim ads to particular users interested in their product or service.”
Morrissey – Slide balance user ad seesaw
Morrissey, Brian. “Can Slide balance user- ad seesaw?” Adweek 8/6/2007 Vol. 48 issue 49 p. 11.
About: Widgets are mini slideshows that appear on web pages to give advertisements. Surveys indicate they reach a fifth of all internet users.
Audience: Article written for advertisers and developers.
Relevance: The makers of Slide are trying to get their widgets seen by more people by allowing them to download custom shows. They are addressing the problem of internet advertising being too aggressive at times and scaring the public away.
Key Quotations: “Its alternative offers users the option of downloading branded skins on their photo slide shows, displaying their affinity for movies and series like Discovery’s Last Man Standing. AT&T Wireless has also signed on to sponsor a slideshow that will play a ringtone when a user lands on the page.”
Arrington- Project Beacon.
Arrington, Michael. “Ok heres part of what Facebook is announcing on Tuesday: Project Beacon.” TechCrunch.com. November 2, 2007.
About: Facebook is announcing the launch of project beacon, which is a way for Facebook to work with third parties to target advertisements at their users based on their buying history. Third parties give information about what a user buys in return for a back link to their site in the news feed.
Audience: General public, consumers, social network users.
Relevance: First news that project beacon is building a database of user information. Facebook wants to know personal buying histories of its users so that it can deliver its own custom fit advertisement to the users that will likely buy the product.
Key Quotations: “There are at least two pieces to the network. One is getting more data in about what users do when they aren’t at Facebook, allowing for far more targeted advertising. The second is running those ads, perhaps even off the Facebook network itself.”
Ante- Generation myspace is getting fed up
Ante , Holahan. “Generation Myspace is getting fed up” BusinessWeek 2/7/2008.
About: Study shows that Internet advertising boom is overhyped, people are getting tired of looking at ads on profile pages. The response rate for these ads is very low, making it hard to generate revenue from ads, Google might be losing money.
Audience: Probably written for investors or advertisers looking at the social network to place ads for their company
Relevance: My paper is about what is wrong with social network sites being turned into the next biggest advertising niche, and this article points out the elemental problems associated with this type of advertising campaign. Low user response rate, declining number of members to sites (total overall gain but declining rate of gain) lead to why they are trying to target more ads.
Key Quotations: “What you have with social networks is the most overhyped scenario in online advertising,” says Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Specific Media, which places ads for customers on a variety of Web sites.
“The MySpace generation may be getting annoyed with ads and a bit bored with profile pages. The average amount of time each user spends on social networking sites has fallen by 14% over the last four months, according to market researcher ComScore”
“Besides the slowing user growth and declining time spent on these sites, users appear to be growing less responsive to ads, according to several advertisers and online placement firms. If advertisers can’t figure out how to reverse these trends, social networking could end up as a niche market in the online ad world, smashing hopes and valuations across Silicon Valley.”
“Facebook introduced an ad program in November, called Beacon, that alerted users to the purchases of friends in hopes of spurring sales. More than 75,000 Facebook members signed an online petition against the effort.”
“video game publisher Green Screen, stopped advertising on MySpace last spring because of a 13-in-10,000 response rate. “It’s really hard to make money on that anemic click-through rate,” says Seremet.”
Karif- Social network sites open up
Karif, Olga. “Social Network Sites open up.” Business Week online. 2/13/2007, p10-10, 1p
About: Announcing that web sites are planning to open their Application Program Interface (API) to developers. Doing this in hopes of attracting more users to the site. In tech jargon, these are called APIs [application program interfaces], and they’re the software hooks used by developers to build new applications that can communicate glitch-free with existing programs.
Audience: Tech geeks, advertisers.
Relevance: Opening up API’s made everything subsequent to fact possible. Third party developers use APIs to make new applications.
Shmidt-Backlash against Facebook
About: Immediately after release of “news feed” and “mini feed” users openly display their problems they have with it. Groups with names like, “official petition against news feed” sprung up all over the social network allowing students to voice their problems with it.
Audience: General Public, social network users.
Relevance: Intrusive nature of news feed initially angered majority of users, however they eventually accepted it. If people had been more passionate about stopping facebook from being so intrusive, the news feed probably wouldn’t be a place to advertise.
Key quotations: “Sponsors now spend thousands to advertise on the site and politicians are also tapping into Facebook. For Zuckerberg, the News Feed allows Facebook users to better keep up with each other. “All the most interesting stuff that’s going on is presented to you,” Zuckerberg told TIME recently. “The analogy would be instead of an encyclopedia, it’s now news. We’re emphasizing what’s going on now.””
Facebook Unveils Facebook ads
Nov. 6, 2007
About: mark zuckerberg unveils an opportunity for businesses to send advertisements to the audience of their choice. “Today, Facebook Ads launched with three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.”
Audience: General public, marketing executives
Relevance: Huge opportunity for third party developers to design pages to advertise from.
Key Quotations: Unique Ads with Social Actions “Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people,” said Zuckerberg. “It’s no longer just about messages that are broadcasted out by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends. So we set out to use these social actions to build a new kind of ad system.”
Apr
17
Outline
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Pete Todaro
ENGL 202
Advertising on Facebook, Future of Marketing
Over the past year, the social networking site Facebook has evolved from a simple social utility open only to college students to the new stage to advertise from. The website has learned to use information in a users profile to send targeted advertisements to them.
I. What used to be and What is
A. Mark Zuckerberg starts up social network site for college students.
B. Open to all people
1. News Feed
2. Opposition to news feed
II. Advertising Strategies
A. Open APIs
1. third party developers
2. competitor API
B. Widget Sales
C. Mars Celebrate
III. Business Deals
A. Google Pays $240 million
B. Facebook Ads
IV. Unhappy public
A. Fed up myspace users
B. Online petition against facebook
V. Making internet advertising profitable
Apr
9
working bibliography
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Morrissey, Brian. “Can Slide Balance User-Ad Seesaw?.” Adweek 48.29 (06 Aug. 2007): 11-11. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. [Library name], [City], [State abbreviation]. 9 Apr. 2008 .
Jay, Rufus. “Real Facebook shop in virtual world breathes life into Mars.” Marketing Week (01419285) 31.7 (21 Feb. 2008): 14-14. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Stapleton Lbrary, Indiana, PA. 26 Mar. 2008 .
Ante, Spencer E., and Catherine Holahan.. “Generation MySpace Is Getting Fed Up.” Business Week (18 Feb. 2008): 54-55. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Stapleton LIbrary, Indiana, PA. 27 Mar. 2008 .
Kharif, Olga. “Social-Networking Sites Open Up.” Business Week Online (13 Feb. 2007): 10-10. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Stapleton Library, Indiana, PA. 30 Mar. 2008 .
Booth, Nick. “Google coding tools open alternatives to Facebook.” Computer Weekly (13 Nov. 2007): 14-14. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Stapleton Library, Indiana, PA. 30 Mar. 2008 .
“Friend accepted.” Economist 385.8552 (27 Oct. 2007): 75-76. Business Source Premier. EBSCO. Stapleton Library, Indiana, PA. 2 Apr. 2008 .
Apr
9
Proposal Adjustments
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In my abstract, I effectively posed the questions that I am researching like how does information in a users profile allow facebook to send targeted advertising and how are third party advertisers associated with facebook. There were some aspects of the subject that were lacking. How does it work? How are users reacting? Why is this type of advertising more effective than regular web pages?
The fieldwork statement is not very likely to be of use to me nor is it likely I could get participants in to help in my personal research. At this point I doubt individual fieldwork would be helpful.
Apr
7
Digesting Sources
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Digesting Sources
Real Shop in Facebook World Breathes life into Mars. 2/21/08 Marketing Week.
New application on facebook, Mars Celebrate, allows users to send friends candy. The user pays via PayPal account and a message is sent to the friend. The friend enters their mobile phone number and an SMS barcode is sent to their phone so that they can redeem it at any local store.
People Quoted in the Article:
Lynette Cowan- Client Services director at the Light Agency
Developed Mars Celebrate, says “We began talks with Mars’ Agency Mesh marketing about a facebook sweetshop and they thought it was a perfect match” “It has to be the right brand to fit” – packaged goods
Henry Ellis- head of social media at search conversion agency Tamar
“Its at the mercy of the social graph as well. If Paris Hiliton had launched an application like this it wouldn’t have worked because people don’t like her, but people like Mars”
Blake Chandlee- Facebook UK commercial director
If a brand picks up on a consumer advocacy group that’s targeting them early enough, they can manage that in a much better way.”
Mark Charkin- Bebo’s UK head of sales
“If brands stamp in and try to force sales, it wont work”
“Just because virtual gifts are a success doesn’t mean gifts in an offline environment will work.”
Stone -Microsoft to pay $240 million for stake in Facebook
Stone, Brad. “Microsoft to pay $240 million for Stake in Facebook.” The New York Times. October 25, 2007.
About: This newspaper article discusses the importance of Facebook as a new operating system to run targeted advertising. The author talks about the feud going on between Google, which owns the majority of the internet advertising rights, and Microsoft, who fears they might lose control of the next generation of computer users.
Audience: This article was probably written for people interested in investing into some of these internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Myspace, The News Corporation)
Relevance: The relevance of this is that Microsoft was willing to pay a lot of money for a small part of this website because of fear of losing out on the market in the future.
Mar
31
Evaluating Sources
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Evaluating Sources
Rufus, Jay
Real Facebook shop in virtual world breathes life into Mars
Marketing Week
February 21, 2008
Accessed 3/24/08
Britain
Relevance: Perfect example of facebook being used to sell products.
Evidence: The article presents information about the subject truthfully with the intention of announcing how candy company, Mars is taking advantage of facebook market to sell candy bars. It sites all of its information.
Source: Author works for Marketing Week, which is a british news journal. Anyone who writes for Marketing Week should have some authority in the field.