Yahoo! have been in talks with Facebook for more than a year now and apparently lately got shy at Facebook’s $1 billion asking price but as I will clarify here Yahoo! have missed out on an absolute bargain.
Facebook have 18 million users, plenty. Nonetheless MySpace has 100 million + and sold for a mere $580 million to News Corp’s in 2005. YouTube sold to Google for a reported $1.65 billion in 2006 but it serves more than 100 million video’s a day and has over 25 million visitors a month. So what makes Facebook so beneficial? It gets relatively massive traffic levels but not on par with YouTube or MySpace. Despite now getting readily available to anybody it began life as an exclusive network for students (you necessary an educational email to register) and this really is still its main user group.
funny facebook status. Why Facebook Is Worth More than $10 Billion. 130
So where’s the money?
Currently Facebook displays conventional banner advertising on users’ homepages and selected pages through the web-site. Adverts are unobtrusive and random in so substantially as they’re not targeted at any particular user- they’re just served to the whole website on a random basis. Facebook are doing ok out of this arrangement on the basis with the number of page impressions they obtain, despite the fact that in reality they’re keeping advertising at a minimum in order to build up the value of the internet site for its eventual sale which will pretty much certainly take place in 2007/8. Intelligent guys!
The energy of info
Register with Facebook and swiftly you may obtain oneself giving away massive volumes of valuable personal info. Think about it… Facebook know your name, they know how old you are (basically your D.O.B which is infinitely far more valuable as I’ll go on to clarify), they know if you’re male or female, they know your hometown, your postcode in the event you select to give it away (although I doubt a lot of users select this), they know if you are single, in a relationship (and who with), married, divorced etc, they know your sexual orientation. Ok so you’ll be able to answer all these questions as honestly, dishonestly or vaguely as you like but from what I’ve noticed folks happily give accurate info about themselves as it’s their buddies and potential friends who are going to see it- and nobody else correct?
But what else do Facebook know? Properly they know where you went to school, where you perform, much more sinisterly your religious and political views. From this we can start out to build up a fairly useful market profile. As I’m telling Facebook I might too tell you I’m Male, 22 (born in August), Straight, in a relationship, conservative, atheist from Brighton, England. Went to school at Blatchington Mill Secondary, college at a location known as BHASVIC, University at Bournemouth. From this facts we can draw further assumptions- I live in Brighton and according to the location of my schools catchment location we could pretty accurately map places in Brighton I know about, go to, and live in (feel Google maps API). I’m a straight; conservative from a reasonably wealthy location in full time employment therefore I’m most likely white, middle class with a decent disposable income.
funny facebook status. Facebook: A Well known Social Networking Website. 643
So what else? Facebook know what you appear like, they quite possibly know what you employed to appear like a few years ago at the same time. In all probability most substantially they know who your buddies are, they know how you realize them, they know once you speak to them, what they look like and ultimately they know exactly the exact same information and facts about them as they know about you- you’re interests, likes and dislikes and your friends tastes also.
They know your e-mail address, so they know in case you use Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail etc. They know your telephone number so they could pretty easily perform out your phone provider. They have your IP address so they could perform out your ISP. They know where you’ve arrived in the web page from so they know what search engine you use (enter Yahoo! And Google towards the bidding war), what browser you’re on, they know if you are visually impaired or have studying disabilities from the settings on your browser.
Facebook know when I’m logging in and from where so they know the hours I function, if I’m using the internet at function, the pages I leave Facebook to go to or the pages I come from so they know what other websites I examine. I can set my current status and tell Facebook precisely what I’m performing or feeling proper this second.
Ok so you get the picture by now, 1 last thing although, is your Facebook password the very same as your email account password, your net and telephone banking password, every other password you use within your everyday life (because until I wrote this post mine was!) how much additional information do you would like to give away?
What’s the risk here?
Realistically it’s fairly slim. Facebook are a nice bunch of guys and also a great internet site, I love using it and despite knowing what I know about facts security plus the like I pick out to give away a major chunk with the details I’ve talked about here.
Yahoo! And Facebook
So if Yahoo!, Google or god forbid Microsoft effectively acquire Facebook (as I say I’m reasonably confident this will occur this year) the Orwellian lucid dream proposed by this post becomes a perpetual nightmare. Envision a corporation who’ve created billions and dominated the fastest growing industry in the globe by developing algorithms which crawl hundreds of millions of pages of random information (the world wide web) and categorize that facts with the ultimate aim of matching it to organizations and selling advertising.
The search algorithm let loose on Facebook
Imagine the search engines let loose on Facebook. An algorithm tuned to pick out profile facts (John, born 13.08.84). Map it to key phrases in private interests i.e. football, Manchester United. Plot your location on a map i.e. Brighton, England. Follow links to your closest pals with similar interests i.e. Bob and Dave who live round the corner and serve me an advert some thing like:
Content birthday for next week John.
Did you realize its Dave’s birthday the week following?
Why not book tickets for Brighton and Hove Albion vs. Manchester united on 12.08.07
Click here to book now and get three tickets for the price of two (why not ask bob to come along- he supports Brighton and you haven’t spoken in a when).
Book currently and we’ll give you a half cost limo from your house towards the game with trashy-limo’s.com.
Now that’s powerful advertising and it’s just around the corner. If Facebook has 25 million registered users by the time it’s sold, half of whom check out every day that’s a minimum 12.5 million page impressions a day. Serve the advert above at $1 a click (which is far much less than its worth according to the current AdWords CPC model) expect a click by way of rate of up to 10% based on the precise nature with the advertising and that’s $1.2 million minimum a day- almost $½ a billion a year. Grow that user group to 50 million (realistic if Google or Yahoo! can tap into their existing user database) and sell ad space on an affiliate basis say the football tickets at $300 using a 10% affiliate kickback and also a 10% conversion rate =$3 per user x 25 million users =$75 million per day or $2737500000 in year 1! OK lets not get carried away people aren’t going to devote $300 just about every other day but the logics there and so the money.
Will the audience except it?
Much better excellent advertising implies less advertising- much less web pages rammed with banners so you can’t come across what you’re on the lookout for, less popups, less low quality merchandise. This is the main driving force behind the achievement of search marketing programs and profile based advertising is already in place with Google’s personalized search returning more targeted AdWords ads than previously possible. If it falls into the hands of Microsoft then people today could possibly be much more wary but using the image of Google or Yahoo! and Facebook profile facts is seen as soft data as the business does not sell you products directly and he service is totally free. It’s the way the net is going and I think it’s where we’ll be in five years.
Identity theft
The point I’ve been generating tediously via this post is that we must be far more cautious about what information we give up and to whom. If the internet was a county it would be Nazi Germany and Facebook could be the Gestapo! Social utilities like Facebook are afforded the sort of privileged facts fascist governments the world more than would and have killed for. We moan about identity cards becoming introduced within the UK (ironically there’s a number of Facebook groups dedicated towards the trigger) but we happily give up individual details to a bunch of college geeks in the states who are ultimately planning on selling our details to the highest bidder (the value of any web-site is based on the volume, good quality and amount of information and facts they have about their traffic- but very best of luck to them) possibly to the company who already manage the majority of world small business systems via the windows platform.
This post isn’t meant to scare- it’s just a recognition of the power of new world wide web technologies, their possibly applications and to pose the question- if your Facebook buddies are your real friends shouldn’t they know your birthday? Are Facebook really going to purchase you a present?!
