The power of social networking sites should not be underestimated as the trend clearly illustrates the popularity of social networking is not on decline. It is only a beginning of a revolutionary change in the way people socialize, communicate and make decisions.
According to Hitwise, (a web analytics firm) in the UK, social networks receives more hits than google.
"during May 2010, social networks accounted for 11.88% of UK Internet visits and search engines accounted for 11.33%, representing the first ever month that social networks have been more popular than search engines in the UK.
Should google be worried? They claim that this is of no concern to them. Google also admits that more time is being spent on social networks, but claims that their interest is quite the opposite. They want people to search on google and find what they are looking for in as little time as possible.
While this might have some logic in it, I am not convinced. How would advertisers react knowing that their add may not have a chance of even being seen... and what if people could actually start searching on facebook? Now that would be an interesting shift!
Sunday 13 June 2010
Facebook II
I recently had the pleasure of having an insight to facebook that was provided by an actual insider!
It was a great session but very short. I had so many questions in relation to how get the most out of facebook which remained unanswered so I guess I just need to continue my experimentation on facebook.
Overall the discussion were mainly about what facebook is about and what their plans are. As can be expected, there were also many questions about privacy issues etc. Nonetheless, we didn't discuss the issue of facebook ban in China and whether facebook expects any changes in this market.
What I got out of the session...
What I did eventually get an answer for at the end of the class was how their 'bidding' advertising works? You basically decide your own price and the chance for your add to appear based on that price, depends on the amount of other bidders with similar add! This is something I will experiment with and I will write about the result in due course.
An interesting notion about advertising opportunities on facebook was their interactive adds which are the most successful on their site. In fact, these are often shared with friends if the advertiser can satisfy the targeted customer.
While these are not bidding adds and a quotation would be necessary to obtain the price, it is an amazing way to communicate a message without being intrusive. Something that companies should really be careful with if they want to advertise successfully.
But how do they customize the adds on each person's profile?
Do they use analytical tools on profile behavior? When you click on different profiles, you can see that the advertisements differ according to the interest of the particular profile. I have seen this change on my own profile. For a while I was searching for pages related to IT and at the same time, the advertising on my profile was mainly IT related.
Equally, when I joined sited related to nutrition, calorie count etc, I kept receiving advertising which related to diet.
Other opportunities are games, quizzes and different applications. For example a health/fitness company could post quizzes where vitamins/calories could be guessed. Also applications such as calorie counts and tracks. There are many other games, applications and quizzes I could think of which could increase the traffic to a given page. Another option would be to use these tools to direct the traffic to the actual website.
It was a great session but very short. I had so many questions in relation to how get the most out of facebook which remained unanswered so I guess I just need to continue my experimentation on facebook.
Overall the discussion were mainly about what facebook is about and what their plans are. As can be expected, there were also many questions about privacy issues etc. Nonetheless, we didn't discuss the issue of facebook ban in China and whether facebook expects any changes in this market.
What I got out of the session...
What I did eventually get an answer for at the end of the class was how their 'bidding' advertising works? You basically decide your own price and the chance for your add to appear based on that price, depends on the amount of other bidders with similar add! This is something I will experiment with and I will write about the result in due course.
An interesting notion about advertising opportunities on facebook was their interactive adds which are the most successful on their site. In fact, these are often shared with friends if the advertiser can satisfy the targeted customer.
While these are not bidding adds and a quotation would be necessary to obtain the price, it is an amazing way to communicate a message without being intrusive. Something that companies should really be careful with if they want to advertise successfully.
But how do they customize the adds on each person's profile?
Do they use analytical tools on profile behavior? When you click on different profiles, you can see that the advertisements differ according to the interest of the particular profile. I have seen this change on my own profile. For a while I was searching for pages related to IT and at the same time, the advertising on my profile was mainly IT related.
Equally, when I joined sited related to nutrition, calorie count etc, I kept receiving advertising which related to diet.
Other opportunities are games, quizzes and different applications. For example a health/fitness company could post quizzes where vitamins/calories could be guessed. Also applications such as calorie counts and tracks. There are many other games, applications and quizzes I could think of which could increase the traffic to a given page. Another option would be to use these tools to direct the traffic to the actual website.
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