Monday, July 23, 2012

Facebook is doomed

How Facebook plans to make money (commensurate with and justifying of its current valuations) according to today's NY Times:

Among the most promising of those efforts, from a marketer’s point of view, is Facebook Exchange, which is intended to track the behavior of Facebook users when they are visiting other sites and serve up tailored advertisements when they return to Facebook.
Orbitz, the travel company, is among the advertisers that are trying Facebook Exchange. If it sees a consumer looking for, say, a business hotel in New York, Orbitz can place an advertisement for New York hotels on that user’s Facebook page, with the hope that the user will return to the travel site and make the booking. Chris Stevens, senior director of retail for Orbitz, said it was too early to determine the impact on sales. [Our bold.]
Earlier in the article, Facebook's head advertising/adsense/tech guy, Gokul Rajaram is described/quoted as follows:
Part of the challenge is that advertisements, as Mr. Rajaram once put it, should not feel like advertisements. “You would much rather hear a message from your friend than hear a message from a brand,”

So explicit appeals/pitches from advertisers are regarded as unwelcome, but having Facebook stalk you across the web and hand the data it collects about you to advertisers so they can 'see' you and then abuse your Facebook home-space as they see fit is going to fly/not provoke revulsion and resistance? Ha ha ha. Facebook is doomed: the return of the underpants gnomes.

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