blending the mix

So, OFCOM’s latest research suggests that kids as young as 11 are opening (without age verification) accounts on social networks.

- 49% of children 8-17 have an online profile
- 22% of 16+ have an online profile
- On average adults have profiles on 1.6 sites
- 63% of 8 to 17-year-olds with a profile use Bebo
- 37% of 8 to 17-year-olds with profile use MySpace
- 18% of 8 to 17-year-olds with a profile use Facebook
- 59% of 8 to 17-year-olds use social networks to make new friends
- 16% of parents do not know if their child’s profile is visible to all
- 33% of parents say they set no rules for their children’s use of social networks
- 43% of children say their parents set no rules for use of social networks

Source: Ofcom (from bbc)

More to follow once I have digested the report…

I think I am going to create a new category called "missing a trick", I seem to be posting a lot of stuff there are the moment, but I am not sure if I will be quite so up my arse in 2008 as I was in 2007

The problem

I have noticed on Facebook that despite creating social ads (depending on which side of the fence you sit), they do not seem to have adjusted their left-hand banner sizes to suit. See the picture below:

As a marketer, I look at the left-hand banner and think "professional, looks fairly good, fits the allocated space and has a fairly visible call-to-action".

I look on the right-hand side (of the above image) and ok, the "Sony Vaio for £23.45" is a dodgy-looking offer but it looks like a cheap, classified ad. There is a significant amount of white space that makes me think the advertiser is not capable of creating a professional-looking ad on the left – so why should I buy from them?

Social ads only allow for a 110px x 80px ad so does that mean that as Facebook users we end up paying more than the big brands for less ad space?

OK, you may rightly argue that the ad is centred vertically to the banner, but how shoddy does THAT look?

The solution

I see it being two-fold:

a) Provide a two-tier social ad system.

The current social ads remain as-is. Small, functional and low-budget.

The second-tier allows social ad users the opportunity to play with the "big-boys" and create a full-sized banner.

b) Allow social ads to integrate with other social ads.

Say I am promoting a sun-tan salon. Using the social ad system, why could I not share costs with another ASSOCIATED social advertiser who say, sells swimwear, moisturiser, holidays or whatever else is associated with sun-tan salons!

The keyword ad system already allows this kind of search so why not apply it to finding business partners too?

To avoid the inevitable "I paid, they got the click" argument, the partner who did not get the click receives a small % of commission from the partner who did.

Let’s say the partners split the cost of the 10p per click 50/50. The clicked-on partner pays the non-clicked partner .05p per click received (based on a recommended amount relative to the value paid of the click).

Because the clicked-on ad has a higher chance of earning sales revenue from their own website, the fee paid to the non-clicked partner is minimal compared to what they could receive in terms of sales or email sign-up etc.

OK, so it may be a mad-cap scheme full of holes and the current ad system is already pants, so why ad complexity that is simply not up to the job anyway, but more than anything – this allows the community to connect with itself to make money for itself using Facebook.

Dear Reader

I would like to announce the closure of Facebook.

Robert Scoble has been banned from Facebook for running a script that would allow him to access all his personal information which is strictly against their Terms of Use.

As a result, his account has been suspended and Facebook is now considering closing their doors for good in light of the great evangelist no longer being able to promote the networking site. (ok, that last bit might be a little exaggerated but it has become a bit pants of late!).

The blogosphere is awash with commentary and articles about the debacle and I am doing my bit to add to the furore. I hope you find this article as useless as the other tosh out there.

Best regards

Paul Fabretti

I have one question though: WTF was he trying to do? Yes, the data is his but he cannot expect to try and break in to Facebook to get it back.

As Rodney says, it is quite reassuring to see that Facebook can detect this type of activity, but just because my car may be at a garage under repair, does not mean I can break into the bloody garage to get a CD from the radio.

We all have Facebook friends we like and Facebook friends we befriend because we were young and naïve and thought it was cool to connect with these people. But what happens when these people keep posting rubbish and, actually, we realise there was a reason we lost touch with them years ago…

Facebook has always had an algorithm which shows more of the friends you link with more often, but this feature below is new and VERY welcome:

Now, we can help Facebook learn which friends we want to hear from without offending those people we don’t.

It is not clear if you are indicating your preference as to whether you want to hear all news from a friend or just specific bits of news from the friend (i.e. app. Add ads, group ads, actions etc.) but it will certainly help me ensure drunken-buffoons I am too scared to de-friend do not appear in my news feed!

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Facebook Debate and had a great time for several reasons which I wasn’t expecting.

There’s not much I can add to the many reviews of the debate itself, so, in a fit of madness sanity, I am going to abbreviate it all…bear with me, I’m not used to being concise…

1) Hugh MacLeod is an awesome guy and it was great to meet him finally.

2) Damien Mulley and Robin Blandford are two guys as clever as they are great company to be in.

3) Despite it being the third largest network on Facebook, there are a lot of UK marketeers with a lot to learn.

4) Monetising Facebook was barely touched-on but is a massive can of worms (more on that later in the week).

5) Facebook is simply another platform within which we talk about social objects. We just talk using different tools on Facebook.

6) The more utility users get from Facebook, the less susceptible to advertising they will become – idiot advertisers/app developers beware

7) If it took opening the developer platform to bring Facebook up to myspace’s size (in the UK at least), what else is up its sleeve now that myspace and bebo are opening up their doors too?

There is a definite corporate networking opportunity – people do business with people.

9) There NEEDS to be another conference looking at the monetisation of Facebook.

10) I was the ONE person in the room who DID land a job because of Facebook!

That’s my thoughts on the debate itself, but here are some wider thoughts that came from listening, watching and talking to a lot of people:

1) There are a vast amount of people out there who have no idea what Facebook is.
2) There are almost as many people out there who want to do something with Facebook but don’t know why.
3) There are quite a lot of people out there who understand Facebook and want to do something with it, but don’t know what.
4) There are loads of people people out there who are already doing something with Facebook and don’t know why.
5) There are a few people out there who are already doing something with Facebook and don’t know what to do now they have started.
6) There are a tiny amount of people out there who are already doing something on Facebook and actually understand why and what to do with it all.
7) KMP are on the right track – we are using sound business thinking when approaching all matters "Web 2.0". Phew.

There.

Done…other than to say, well done and thanks to the host, Paul Walsh of the BIMA who organised the event. The UK, as Facebook’s 3rd largest audience needs to understand more and hopefully this event will be the trigger for more.

Tags: facebook debate, facebook, bima, paul walsh

Great interview from the recent Techcrunch40 conference where Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook talks about the past and the futere plans of Facebook. Exciting news on the ad front and sponsored groups methinks!!

Thanks to intruders.tv for the link.

Tags: facebook, mark zukerberg, techcrunch40, intruders.tv

Proof, if proof were ever required, that Robert Scoble has a bigger brain than the rest of us:

Previous research has suggested that a person’s conventional friendship group consists of around 150 people, with five very close friends but larger numbers of people who we keep in touch with less regularly. This figure is so consistent that scientists have suggested it is determined by the cognitive constraints of keeping up with large numbers of people. Larger numbers just require too much brain effort to keep track of.

source:
(Guardianonline)
With 4,999 facebook friends, it is obvious that Robert is able to process many more relationships that most normal human beings. Robert, I salute you! On a more sensible note, I find it interesting how important this 150:5 ratio is when you consider that Facebook adapts your friend list according to the frequency of contact and similarities between, groups of friends. Does this enhance or reduce our ability to carry out relationships with a greater number of people? Is it better to have fleeting relationships with more people or closer relationships with fewer people? I don’t think Facebook necessarily solves this problem, but with its adaptive friendship algorithm (where you see less news from people you don’t contact regularly), it certainly helps meaning we can all be a bit more like Robert!

Update 129/07/: Robert has published that Facebook now helps him decide which friends are worth adding by indicating how many friends he already has in common withe the person looking to be added! Cool. More reason again for Robert to be able to manage more contacts than anyh other human being!

If ever there was a sign that social networks are here to stay, it is with the below:

The BBC are now allowing people to tag their content into all of the above bookmark sites, but importantly, Facbook is there too.

The BBC are great advocates of Facebook – their network has just under 9,000 members (!) but what I feel is significant is that they consider Facebook to be of such importance that they want us, the end user to join in too. By September, analysts expect Facebook to me bigger than MySpace but how much bogger can it become now it has the support of the BBC?

The cynic in me wonders what is in it for them!

Tags: facebook, bbc, social networks, myspace

MarketingVox reports some interesting details about facebook’s recent growth.

Maybe the money isn’t in the kids after all…

• More than half of Facebook users are not currently enrolled in a university or college.
• The fastest-growing demographic is the 25+ age group.
• Facebook is the sixth-most trafficked site in the United States.
• Users spend an average of 20 minutes on the site daily.
• The site is the No. 1 photo-sharing application on the web.
• Photo application draws more than twice as much traffic as the next three sites combined.
• Canada, with more than 3 million active users, has the most users outside of the US.
• The UK has the third-largest user-base, with more than 2 million active users.
• Over 1,800 applications have been built on the Facebook Platform.
• More than 75 percent of Facebook users have used at least one Facebook application.

A natural shift in demographics from a wider user base or a sign of things to come for social networks?

One question – I wonder if the Twitter demographics work the other way around? Older founder members, getting younger…but aren’t the kids using IM?