I Hope There is More to Facebook’s Monetization Strategy
November 7, 2007 | Written by Yan Shikhvarger
It seems the company receiving the most positive coverage recently has been Facebook. It is being hailed as the "new Google" and the dominant social network that got 30M unique visitors last month. The only common concern has "what is Facebook’s monetization strategy?"
Today, there was a small glimpse of a monetization tactic, which I hope will be avoided in the future. It involves a recent promotion for an upcoming movie National Treasure. It appeared on my personal news feed and invited to "Join The World’s Biggest Treasure Hunt." However, clicking on the link simply took me the home page of the movie website. How is this different than any simple banner ad on any other website? There is nothing special about a site that can offer more ad inventory. What is exciting about Facebook for marketers is that it offers an opportunity to create programs that leverage what Facebook is – a social network. That treasure hunt could have been some kind of widget that works within Facebook and allows one to invite friends, send them free gifts, connect to the Flixster widget, etc… That is what Facebook users expect, while a simple banner ad or text link could have been placed on any other website.
Hopefully there are other monetization strategies in the works both from Facebook and from marketers.
Comments (1)
November 7th, 2007 at 10:46 am Posted by Stephen Downs
I agree, this is a rather underwhelming attempt. Moreover, Facebook announced today that it will rollout ads on the site. Could this be the beginning of the end? I think so, for these reason: The reason Facebook is so successful can be attributed to numerous reasons, however its simple, streamlined accessibilty and design take the cake. A User can simply login and quickly have access to all their relevant and personal information and friends. The advent of advertising, aimed at leveraging the billions of daily pageviews, may represent the beginning of the fall of Facebook for the simple reason of Clutter.
-The beautiful thing about Facebook is your ability as the user to control your virtual network of friends. Only you decide the people in your network, only you decided the display of content on your profile, only you control your pages. What will happen when the pages are cluttered with unwanted contamination in the form of intrusive online ads?
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