RoyBatty: imprimere: CasperImproved: Am I the only one that doesn't have a FB account?

Nope, never had one and never will.

Would either of you be interested in a service costing, say $5 a year that maintained facebook profiles for you?

You provide it randomly accurate information about your zip code, age, job, where you shop, and eat, and it would log in as you, and check in, and repost photos of friends or post photos of made up groups composited together or just posted landscapes and museum like things and occasionally liked either some important issue you had pre-selected, or some pretty neutral things:

CasperImproved likes the new Prometheus Trailer!

And maybe every so often it sent you on short business trips, or out for tourism?

Maybe you fill out a story arc that you can edit and change whenever you want, and that the service follows, inserting live relevant details as they occur.

Imprimere liked Lady Gaga concert in Seattle last night!

CasperImproved tagged Imprimere in this photo of Seattle Micro Brew

It might be fun to announce such a service and build it, and then see what happens to Facebook stock prices, and then one day, buy a bunch of FB stock and kill the service.

Is it okay that I say I have no clue what you are posting about?

Just seems like it might be easy, fun, and even valuable to create a service to create semi-virtual experiences in facebook to beard for users.

harlock: Facebook has ads? Oh yea, some people browse without AdBlockPlus and NoScript.

THIS.

Ad blocking technology is going to continue to proliferate, and even if the ads are displayed people just tune them out.

Outside of search, online advertising is broken in all respects. A big part of the brokenness is on the advertiser side. They measure "success" in click-thru rate, and expect instant gratification. Most advertising isn't about generating impulse purchases - it's about building brand awareness, and you can't measure it's effectiveness by short-term click-thru rates. It may take hundreds, if not thousands, of impressions to get your brand into someone's consciousness... and when they ARE ready to buy, they're probably NOT going to click through yet another ad to get to your site, they're either going to go directly to your site or do a search on your brand name. But that's a lot harder than tracking a click-through rate and doesn't satisfy that (wrong-headed) quest for instant gratification.

If I could pay to:

a) make a mockery of FB
b) screw with the integrity of their data
c) cause the actual demise of FB

Then sign me up!

I would pay a minimal amount to join that project. I'd even give some of my time and more money if this was somehow entertaining. This could include:

a) seeing people biatch about the integrity of FB being comprimised
b) making FB and its users use additional programs to filter out "auto-tagging" or some such
c) cause me to once read something along the lines of "make sure your FB data is secure"

Anyway, I'm not a full-on internet hater or troll, but I would love to help in tearing down FB!

RoyBatty Imprimere: If I could pay to:

a) make a mockery of FB
b) screw with the integrity of their data
c) cause the actual demise of FB

Then sign me up!

I would pay a minimal amount to join that project. I'd even give some of my time and more money if this was somehow entertaining. This could include:

a) seeing people biatch about the integrity of FB being comprimised
b) making FB and its users use additional programs to filter out "auto-tagging" or some such
c) cause me to once read something along the lines of "make sure your FB data is secure"

Anyway, I'm not a full-on internet hater or troll, but I would love to help in tearing down FB!

Sorry, this is to RoyBatty

the people who'd pay to highlight a post are the same people who buy clothes for their avatars.. but there are plenty of services for which thefacebook could charge. If I didn't know about the add-ons already, I might pay $5 not to see ads and not to be tracked. I'd pay a few dollars for instance, to generate 10 identical profiles of myself each with tagged and randomized pictures, to throw off facial recognition software. What about group chats into which you can screen films (like ustream)... what happened to the thefacebook app allowing you to embed mp3s on your wall? Why can't I view pdfs, docs or ppts or use html? There are tons of things they can do with it to make it more useful/appealing as they trumpet their hatred of privacy..

Terrible Old Man: It's kind of shocking how little people use common sense.

Do you use Facebook or any other webpage in existence? Sure. Do you see ANY ads ever? Odds are no. Even if you do, do you EVER click them? Odds are never.

How is that ever sustainably profitable, do you think?

Internet stocks always open big because people dumbly think 'ooo, computer stuff is so cutting edge!' but the reality is everybody acts just like you do, no one ever sees ads. Unless the service itself is for profit and profit-generating, it makes no money.


The real money for Facebook is not ads but selling the stats about their user base. All your profile likes and surveys are all gathered together for marketing companies to buy up for cash money. Not to mention the tracking of your web history when signed into fb.

Arbitrator: I'm aware of the underwriter limit, but I assumed (perhaps mistakenly) that some brokers would still lend shares for shorting. I just find the constant prattling that "shares will tank, shares will tank" to be irritating; if you're that confident, you can make money off of it.

Yeah, I agree. The fact is they aren't sure enough to put money on it even if they could because they're just making wild guesses. You'd have to be a complete moron to blindly short Facebook without first seeing what it does tomorrow and the next few weeks and they know that too.

Gunny Walker: BMFPitt: The author of TFA does not understand what a Ponzi scheme is.

I think the Ponzi comparison is not a money thing. It's like when some one signs up for Amway. They bug their friends. Then their friends sign up for Amway. Then the friends of their friends get bugged to get on Amway. All the while those with the most friends and exist higher in the food chain, reap better benefits from Facebook. Not through advertising. Never through advertising.
It's a popularity Ponzi scheme.
Eventually, there are only so many friends in the world. With a limited number of friends, there are a limited number of advertisers that will put money into it. Since the advertising doesn't work, they don't get a lot of repeat business. Once they run out of those limited number of friends, they go out of business. It's a large number of friends, but still finite.
Or that's the way I read it.

Did you even read the article? It had absolutely nothing to do with a limited number of friends.

It was basically saying that people buying ads on Facebook are getting zero ROI and Facebook's business model will fail once everyone notices this.

That may well be true, but that makes it a bad business model, not a Ponzi scheme.

BMFPitt:
It was basically saying that people buying ads on Facebook are getting zero ROI and Facebook's business model will fail once everyone notices this.

That may well be true, but that makes it a bad business model, not a Ponzi scheme.

That was my point, though the article did seem to take it a step further and try to associate it with FB's growth. Using this comparison, every product sold through an infomercial is a Ponzi scheme.

imprimere: Anyway, I'm not a full-on internet hater or troll, but I would love to help in tearing down FB!

I actually think it could be a useful service since apparently employers and women seem to want to know you have a reasonable FB presence.

But I also think it might be a fun prank to do just as you say.

RoyBatty: imprimere: Anyway, I'm not a full-on internet hater or troll, but I would love to help in tearing down FB!

I actually think it could be a useful service since apparently employers and women seem to want to know you have a reasonable FB presence.

But I also think it might be a fun prank to do just as you say.

I guess that's what has bugged me the most about FB. Without offering anything new or tangible (MySpace did it!), it somehow became integrated into the business world. I'm so sick of hearing that I need to log into FB to get a deal with a company, leave feedback for an item, or conduct some sort of legit business. There comes a point when it inconveniences me to avoid your precious little, immature gabbing site.

Not to mention, that your "friends" (or anyone really) can create an account for you - using your name (as mine did so we could enter some stupid drawing with the walk-relay team I was in).

Hell, the more I think about it, the more I'd like to help with the algorithm that renders FB useless!

Facebook is a spy op that sells the information they glean to whomever or whatever agency is buying. The entire world has bought it hook, line and sinker.

Look at it.

How do we find out more about the public as a whole and what they like and what they buy?

Let's devise an online system where...say....we get everyone to gloat about themselves, join up with their friends and we can watch how they interact, what they like, what they're thinking, what they're doing, why they're doing it, where they vacation, what their kids look like and how old they are.

Aside from the selling opportunities and income from that, it's a treasure trove of information.

And you thought it was all about you, didn't you!

/Hugs.

I'm a strategist for bestselling authors and billion dollar brands like American Apparel, Tucker Max and Robert Greene.


This is supposed to be good? A sleazy porno clothing company, a dickweed, and someone I've never heard of? Good strategery there, Ryan Holiday.

Robert Greene's The 48 Laws of Power is one of the most requested books in American prison libraries

Of course it has. Another winner.

hubiestubert: Klopfer: You are missing the point. Sure, you can use Facebook to promote your business. Set up a FB page, use it for a direct connection to your potential customers etc.
But FB doesn't make money with FB pages, it makes money with ad spaces. And that's the point: Those very ads don't work.

I do understand the point.

You are spot on. While I'm fuming, you've reminded me of another shameful/shameless site. F Monster.com in the A! Has anyone tried looking for a job on that site lately? Hey douces, I have a degree. I'm looking for a new job, not more schooling or a career in the military!

imprimere: I guess that's what has bugged me the most about FB. Without offering anything new or tangible (MySpace did it!), it somehow became integrated into the business world. I'm so sick of hearing that I need to log into FB to get a deal with a company, leave feedback for an item, or conduct some sort of legit business. There comes a point when it inconveniences me to avoid your precious little, immature gabbing site.

Your resume is not enough.

We need to see where you volunteer, if you are attractive, what your friends look like, what open source projects you have contributed to, what you write in your blog, what your political views are, what your family looks like, what your girlfriend looks like, what pranks you play, where you travel, what kind of photos you take, what expeditions have you been on, what your travel gear looks like, what things you buy, where you eat, if you are fat, if are old, if you are boring, if you are politically correct, if you will embarrass us, what your hobbies are, ...

Yeah, we couldn't get the government to big brother us fast enough, so we just let facebook do it for them.

Ed Finnerty: Facebook is mostly for those too dim to manage their own website but too self-absorbed to notice.

I laughed. I'd like to ask your permission to steal this comment and pass it off as my own.

RoyBatty: imprimere: I guess that's what has bugged me the most about FB. Without offering anything new or tangible (MySpace did it!), it somehow became integrated into the business world. I'm so sick of hearing that I need to log into FB to get a deal with a company, leave feedback for an item, or conduct some sort of legit business. There comes a point when it inconveniences me to avoid your precious little, immature gabbing site.

Your resume is not enough.

We need to see where you volunteer, if you are attractive, what your friends look like, what open source projects you have contributed to, what you write in your blog, what your political views are, what your family looks like, what your girlfriend looks like, what pranks you play, where you travel, what kind of photos you take, what expeditions have you been on, what your travel gear looks like, what things you buy, where you eat, if you are fat, if are old, if you are boring, if you are politically correct, if you will embarrass us, what your hobbies are, ...

Yeah, we couldn't get the government to big brother us fast enough, so we just let facebook do it for them.

Yes, and it's perfectly acceptable that employers monitor you through FB for termination purposes! I'd say the right group of lawyers need to get together and prove that employers monitoring (or at least citing) your FB activity is indeed a violation of your rights as it does lend itself to discrimination based upon any and everything you "are".

hubiestubert: We DO need a better model, but it's going to take folks a while to figure this out.

It may well be an intractable problem.

Advertising-supported content is dying. Payout rates are an order of magnitude lower than they were a decade ago and are continuing to drop as advertisers realize that (outside of a very few niches) online ads just don't work (or they don't work the way they expect/want them to work).

The problem is obvious on the web, but it's even more glaring when you get into smartphone apps. Based on the numbers I've seen, you can get about $1/month per 2000 active users. That means you need a quarter million users just to make minimum wage, and 4-5 times that to hire a junior developer right out of college.

If you charge, it's even worse -- going from "free" to "non-free" drops your download rate by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude. Going from free to non-free (even if it is just $1) loses you 99% of your install base. The only silver lining is that the drop going from $1 to $5 is pretty negligible in comparison. Basically, unless you've got an angry-birds level hit on your hands, you're not going to make shiat selling smartphone apps for either Apple or Android. (And even then, I'll wager Rovio is making the majority of their money on merchandising and not ad impressions)

The only way you can get into million-plus download territory is to stay in the top 20 in your category (there's a huge drop-off in download rate from top 20 to below-the-fold), which is an inherently limiting proposition. The only ones making money off of apps are Apple and Google and a lucky few who are getting the lion's share of their crumbs.

Just curious, have any of you ever used facebook ads with free ad credits? I'm wondering how many people lose money by using the supposed free credits.

I had $50 in free facebook advertising sitting in my web hosting account for awhile and decided to use it. They make you submit a debit/credit card when you first create an ad. What I found interesting was that I had to look the the various tabs to find out how to lock the upper limit because as it stands when you first submit the free ad credits key and such it will set the daily spending limit to $50 and NO upper limit. This means that it will spend the $50 free credit until that is exhausted and then it will switch and charge the card up to $50 per day until the ad is stopped. It generated around $7 total for me and used the $50 within 4 days (luckily I noticed the trap before it got me), for my friends fb ads themselves didn't get much in return either. It has seemed to be a lot more successful by just getting people to share the website

clyph: hubiestubert: We DO need a better model, but it's going to take folks a while to figure this out.

It may well be an intractable problem.


There are some other fundamental problems at play here. Even with marketing as a generic concept, there is such thing as saturation. Advertising as a 'business' has created its own monster. There is virtually nothing we can do nowadays without being marketed to. This has created a marketer VS. consumer atmosphere. Saying you are getting a low ROI with ad dollars becomes a moot point if you realize that your ad dollars don't need to be used in the first place. Advertisers are flooding their own market and constantly trying to figure out how they can cram more in.

Newsflash... you can go ahead and start scaling back your marketing teams. Use your ad dollars on better products. Advertising becomes virtually free when your product is superior as people can communicate this at never-before-seen speeds.

Of course, this flies in the face of corporatization, which is the biggest flaw in the system. Until that is realized, we are doomed to Idiocracy. Capitalism has been replaced. We should stop using that term in anything buy antiquated discussions.

imprimere: Even with marketing as a generic concept, there is such thing as saturation. Advertising as a 'business' has created its own monster.

Agree entirely. People are saturated 24x7 with advertising. Everyone is competing for a limited share of your attention... so only the loudest, most omnipresent voices are going to make an impression. IE the megacorps. Anyone else is just going to get lost in the noise.

Search advertising is a different animal. If I'm searching for something it's because I want something: a product, information, whatever. The very fact that I'm searching means I have an unfulfilled need, and there's a decent chance I'm willing to pay to have that need filled. I'm much less likely to be in a mood to pay for anything if I'm looking at funny cat pictures or socializing -- I'm already fulfilling my need for entertainment/information/social interaction, any attempt to sell me something is at best a distraction.

From a content producer's standpoint, it's discouraging. I have ideas for a couple smartphone apps, but from all my research the RoI makes it seem like a complete waste of time. At least not without resorting to Zynga levels of scumminess and a truckload of venture capital to prime the pump.

jabelar: However, MOST advertising is really trying to get into your brain sort of subliminally so that in the future when you have a need for the product it is the first thing that comes to mind.

That's logic from the 1950s. But does it actually work?

I think the little English lizard guy is funny but I'd never buy insurance from Geico. I love the Most Interesting Man in the World commercials, but I never drink his beer.

Just because someone doesn't rush to go to your web site, doesn't mean they didn't imprint the ad or aren't now somewhat favorably biased towards your product.

So many ads get pushed into our faces every day that they have become annoying. If I go to an article on, say, Forbes.com and the first thing I have to deal with is a full page ad instead of the story I wanted to look at, odds are that if it imprinted on me at all, it has come with an unfavorable bias. But to be fair, the unfavorable bias is probably toward Forbes, because I just closed the page before the ad actually loaded.

How many of these replies are shills for facebook?!
It IS like a Ponzi scheme.
YOU are the product being sold to the online marketers.
Goldman-Sachs are running a pump-and-dump scam.

MacWizard
I think the little English lizard guy is funny but I'd never buy insurance from Geico.

Then again, you know there's a company called Geico and they're in the insurance business.
Even if there are reasons why you might not want to get insurance from that company, chances are you've at least checked them out once to come to that conclusion. Others might have done so as well but decided differently.

There's also a familiarity factor: while I haven't researched it, I bet if people have to pick between two products that are "similar enough" in description and price, they tend to pick the one they've heard of before.
Might even work for insurance: are people willing to trust an insurance company they've never heard of before or the big, established brand name? My guess is they'll either do some research first or feel safer in picking the big name.

The Voice of Doom: MacWizard
I think the little English lizard guy is funny but I'd never buy insurance from Geico.

Then again, you know there's a company called Geico and they're in the insurance business.
Even if there are reasons why you might not want to get insurance from that company, chances are you've at least checked them out once to come to that conclusion. Others might have done so as well but decided differently.

There's also a familiarity factor: while I haven't researched it, I bet if people have to pick between two products that are "similar enough" in description and price, they tend to pick the one they've heard of before.
Might even work for insurance: are people willing to trust an insurance company they've never heard of before or the big, established brand name? My guess is they'll either do some research first or feel safer in picking the big name.

No research involved. I simply don't believe the "you can save $500 just by switching" part of their commercial.

MacWizard: No research involved. I simply don't believe the "you can save $500 just by switching" part of their commercial.

My parents saved over $800 a year by switching from either Allstate or State Farm (can't remember which one it was) to USAA. They had been a customer for quite a few years, no tickets, no claims and a flawless credit history and it still didn't knock down the expensive rates. They didn't seem interested in keeping my parents as customers either when my dad called to see if they could even match the USAA rates. The only problem is you gotta be a part of the military to get USAA but they seem to have the best rates I've ever seen.

blazemongr: Khellendros: So they tell us Facebook is a Ponzi scheme, then go on to explain why it's a Ponzi scheme, but describe something completely different and totally unrelated that demonstrates nothing but a poor use of money.

It's called a metaphor. Ask your grade school grammar teacher about them.

Yes, it's a metaphor. Just like when politicians call other politicians "socialist" or "fascist", it's intended as a metaphor. No, the article took a phrase that has a very specific meaning, and beat the reader over the head with it, using it incorrectly to provoke a visceral reaction. Whether it's being used intentionally incorrectly, or just from ignorance, has not been established. But the author is throwing around very specific words/phrases and using them incorrectly in the same way that "evolution", "theory", and "recession" are abused by many people today.

Words have meanings. And just because you don't like the results or methods used by Facebook in advertising, that doesn't make it a Ponzi Scheme.

Can one of you Farkers answer a question for me? If I use Facebook; am I a customer or am I the product. I just haven't been able to figure this out. Does anybody know?

Facebook advertising is not the real value and Facebook has recognized that in the past year w/ their own data. They continue to sell advertising access and to modify methods to increase pick-up.

However, the real value is in selling certain key information and some of that is worth far more than anything else.

Let's say for example that you are a member of the fictional "Diabetes Support" group on Facebook. The value of knowing your medical condition is quite large that goes far beyond Facebook advertising. So the sale of access to metrics and key data points on you to 3rd parties who can do their own analytics is where the real value is. That they can go beyond Facebook advertising to something far more invasive.

Please note, you cannot uninstall Facebook's application from many smart phones. An intelligent person could then figure out the value of knowing the device ID, phone number, etc. and linking that to your Facebook account brings a whole new angle to this. And an even more intelligent person could surmise how I know all of this.

Facebook's raw information about you is the product. And they are selling it in so many ways it is disturbing. That is why I counsel people who've "had enough" to change their data vs. just deleting their acct. And to remove friends add irrelevant ones (start accepting all of those BS requests). Then just point your acct at a throwaway email acct and walk away.

imprimere: Only from reading the first half of the article (I quickly lost interest), it sounds nothing like a Ponzi scheme. It seems like they are selling a crappy product.

AmImissingsomthin?

Yeah, you missed the entire part where he explains *why* he thinks it's *like* a Ponzi scheme. (Like is a very important word in that last sentence, btw.)

It's a Fonzi Scheme!!

clyph: harlock: Facebook has ads? Oh yea, some people browse without AdBlockPlus and NoScript.

THIS.

Ad blocking technology is going to continue to proliferate, and even if the ads are displayed people just tune them out.

Outside of search, online advertising is broken in all respects. A big part of the brokenness is on the advertiser side. They measure "success" in click-thru rate, and expect instant gratification. Most advertising isn't about generating impulse purchases - it's about building brand awareness, and you can't measure it's effectiveness by short-term click-thru rates. It may take hundreds, if not thousands, of impressions to get your brand into someone's consciousness... and when they ARE ready to buy, they're probably NOT going to click through yet another ad to get to your site, they're either going to go directly to your site or do a search on your brand name. But that's a lot harder than tracking a click-through rate and doesn't satisfy that (wrong-headed) quest for instant gratification.

Exactly... when I do decide that I can no longer live without a combination apple-peeler/garlic press, and I do decide to buy one, the ones who advertised on Facebook will probably be the brands that I then search for in Google.

CMYK and PMS: Can one of you Farkers answer a question for me? If I use Facebook; am I a customer or am I the product. I just haven't been able to figure this out. Does anybody know?

Are you buying anything? If not, then you're not a customer.

MacWizard: The Voice of Doom: MacWizard
I think the little English lizard guy is funny but I'd never buy insurance from Geico.

Then again, you know there's a company called Geico and they're in the insurance business.
Even if there are reasons why you might not want to get insurance from that company, chances are you've at least checked them out once to come to that conclusion. Others might have done so as well but decided differently.

There's also a familiarity factor: while I haven't researched it, I bet if people have to pick between two products that are "similar enough" in description and price, they tend to pick the one they've heard of before.
Might even work for insurance: are people willing to trust an insurance company they've never heard of before or the big, established brand name? My guess is they'll either do some research first or feel safer in picking the big name.

No research involved. I simply don't believe the "you can save $500 just by switching" part of their commercial.

If you can "save" $500 on your car insurance, you're paying WAY too much already. I don't pay that much all year.

Khellendros: Words have meanings. And just because you don't like the results or methods used by Facebook in advertising, that doesn't make it a Ponzi Scheme.

And there has only ever been one Ponzi scheme ever. It was executed by Chuck Ponzi in the twenties. Anything else is a sham and something else.

stonicus: [www.biatchdujour.com image 309x385]
It's a Fonzi Scheme!!

We're gonna be like three little Ponzies here. And what's Ponzi like? Come on Yolanda what's Ponzi like?

Facebook is a Ponzi scheme, according to some hot journalist

author used a bogus term to get extra clicks .. but fark knows nothing if this type of behavior, now, does it?

Benjimin_Dover: Khellendros: Words have meanings. And just because you don't like the results or methods used by Facebook in advertising, that doesn't make it a Ponzi Scheme.

And there has only ever been one Ponzi scheme ever. It was executed by Chuck Ponzi in the twenties. Anything else is a sham and something else.

That was the original Ponzi scheme. It now exists as a very specific illegal business model derived from that incident. It's defined by law, and in business jargon. What Facebook does is nothing resembling this concept.

CMYK and PMS: Can one of you Farkers answer a question for me? If I use Facebook; am I a customer or am I the product. I just haven't been able to figure this out. Does anybody know?

Are you buying anything? If not, then you're not a customer.

Thanks Ric!

stonicus: If you can "save" $500 on your car insurance, you're paying WAY too much already. I don't pay that much all year.

Neither do I, hence the disbelief. But I don't believe anything I hear or see in any commercial.

Bill Hicks' opinion of advertising people in general was totally on the mark. They are a blight to society and should just off themselves now.