Given the size of the social media audience (373 million, globally, in 2007 and projected to rise to over a billion by 2012 - Strategy Analytics) it's no surprise that advertisers are keen to leverage the opportunity. Relative to the audience size, social media are underexploited, but they present unique challenges, which even the gurus of the genre find perplexing.
Facebook recently launched its new social advertising programme, Social Ads. One part of the system, Beacon, got off to a bumpy start. Within a few weeks of its introduction in November, users had clubbed together to create an online petition lambasting the social network for betraying their trust.
Beacon enabled Facebook's 40-or-so commercial partners to track purchases made by Facebook members. These purchases were then highlighted in marketing feeds to the buyers' friends. Surprise Christmas presents were revealed by Overstock.com and users' actual movie viewing habits were disclosed through Fandango.com and Blockbuster.com.
Facebook soon issued an apology to users, quickly realising that it would have to introduce an opt-in for Beacon, as opposed to the opt-out system, which members said was unclear. The trouble with opt-in for companies is that it tends to reduce participation, but better to forgo some dollars than risk a mass exodus from the community. The changes were announced on 29 November.
I'm glad Facebook salvaged the situation, just about in time. Social Ads is not a bad idea at all. It's based on observation of how how Facebook members share information with each other, how they use and respond to news feeds on the site. As such, it was intended not to be too much of an imposition, but to complement existing consumer behaviour, which is a good thing.
Lots of people have been talking about the privacy issue. Clearly this is a factor, but privacy is not as big a deal to social network users as it's made out to be. If Facebook members were that concerned about privacy, they wouldn't post quite so much information in the public domain, and they might just have made the effort to check what was going on with the Social Ads programme. There was an opt-out option. They didn't see it. Most young people wouldn't even have looked.
The main issue, I believe, was that, while it may seem that Facebook friends like to share just about everything, from which Heroes character they are to their Top Friends, or ideal partner, they don't, in fact, like to share EVERYTHING.
What's so good about the online environment is that you can control your 'appearance'. You can present yourself exactly as you like. That means you pick a good-looking photo for your social profiles (or get an OK one touched up to look human on one of the many new online photo manipulation sites e.g. pixoo). You create an attractive avatar, or some symbol that unleashes the 'real' you inside. You challenge your friends to Scrabulous, as a way to demonstrate your hidden talent. Everything that's shared is a social particle that says something about you and enables you to vie for popularity within your peer group. You don't necessarily want your friends to know that you watched some sappy film last night, when you pride yourself on being a film buff. You almost certainly don't want to disclose 'surprise' gifts in advance.
The Beacon debacle also highlighted just how powerful a force people power on the web is. Owners of social networks and online worlds can't be too controlling, or the residents will unite! MoveOn.org, which organised the Facebook petition, rapidly achieved its objectives. It's not the first mass movement. Free Ryzom was a campaign by residents of the online virtual world Ryzom to buy their world, when the owners got into financial trouble. Though they didn't succeed in the purchase, they raised a hell of a lot of money. The spirit of the movement lives on as the Virtual Citizenship Association, which looks out for the interests of citizens across the web.
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