I think what will end up happening eventually is that the price of using Facebook will be 1 message delivered to you each day from a targeted company.
Advertisers will bid against each other for that coveted message each day, and Facebook will figure out how to maximize bids. For example, even celebrities will be targeted, so companies may end up paying $10,000 per message for them, while a typical person may be $1-$5, or something like that.
That really depends on the kind of product you're pushing. If each conversion for you is worth $100,000 and your chances of converting are 1/10,000 it would still be VERY worth it ;)
Target based ads are CPC, so its pay per click. Lets do some simple math, i send out 10,000 messages. 10% open the message, 10% click the link or whatever. Whats my cost per click assuming $1 per message.
Its actually better for the advertiser to pay for this service.
Instead of building a email list for mailing/spamming they now get targeted customer/user with their attention ( as it would land in their inbox) even without the user approving it. Fancy that!
The idea of opt-ins/opt-outs from newsletter/product emails/updates would diminish if this goes through and everyone starts using facebook again.
From what i read elsewhere, the message delivery is free. However, if you recipient is not a friend, you message will end up in their "Other" folder. By paying $1, you'll land in their inbox.
If this becomes popular, I could imagine other "messaging" services (eg. free email services like Gmail) following suit.
I'm still on the fence about whether this is good or bad. Targeted advertisements are a great method of product discovery (at least for me, ie. Amazon). But I'm not sure I'm ready to relinquish my inbox -- email, facebook, or otherwise.
I have never followed an product "advice" that has been forced upon me. For me it is a sign of a bad marketing and/or product and I would rather pay more for a product that has no agressive advertising strategy then support this kind of behaviour.
I think it's a little optimistic to expect any rev-share with recipients, but creating a better economy on the sending side of mass electronic solicitations is a good idea. The only reason our postal mailboxes aren't dumpster-sized and full of junk mail every single day is the cost of planning, producing, and mailing the physical piece of mail. Email is a shit show because the costs of mailing are near zero, and the cost of producing is decoupled from the number of recipients.
If there were a hard cost per recipient, the ROI of email campaigns would change significantly. This change would be positive for users. The question is whether or not senders would bear the burden, or if they would flow to "less legitimate" means of reaching recipients on Facebook. It may be that senders would more willingly accept lower actual reach rather than pay the additional cost.
Revenue sharing could create perverse incentives to game the system. For example, imagine someone in Africa changing their location to United States and liking Gucci, Prada, BMW to become a honeypot. Or pretending to be a celebrity.
I wonder what would happen if Facebook attacked micropayments. If they could replicate the iTunes model, e.g. "Pay with Facebook" for applications, in-store purchasing, etc. then the cost of acquisition combined with lifetime value of the customer could be quite precise.
I am looking at Facebook stock value on NASDAQ. The more users are complaining, the higher stock value is. Investors seems to like the route taken recently by FB.
For some reason Diaspora is not catching up. I thought that many portal owners, who already provide email accounts, would also provide "social" stuff - Diaspora. User can create account on any Diaspora server and connect with any one on any other Diaspora server.
Maybe this is because Diaspora version is something like 0.0.2. Maybe this is because of technology behind it - Rails, instead of e.g. PHP - ugly, but well known and liked by huge majority of hosting/server admins.
Hopefuly one day Diaspora or something based on similar concept would get popular, like Jabber and, all time winner, e-mail.
forget about your personal preferences for a second and think about this from a marketing perspective. This could be huge for Facebook.
Marketers dream for this type of targeting. Now, instead of an ad that people ignore, you could get a message delivered directly to these people. I, for one, would gladly pay $1 per targeted delivery of message.
If the system works as elegantly as Google Adwords, this will be big. It could go either way though. 1) users revolt against this and it flops, or 2) users actually like the messages from high bidders because it targets them especially well.
There was a problem last year when the "other" folder was implemented, you'd get important messages that were completely missed (many people I know missed things that genuinely mattered) and Facebook needs a way to get around this problem. A small arbitrary fee is a perfect solution.
If Facebook wanted to allow marketers to message users directly why wouldn't they build a system for it? I can't see how this is an attempt to make revenue... it would be an awful decision. How would a marketer even know who to target?
what do you mean how would a marketer know who to target? Facebook is the wet-dream of marketers. They have so much info on everyone - what are your likes, what school did you go to, when you got engaged, married, divorced, etc.
I might be misunderstanding how Facebook advertising works, so correct me if I'm wrong, but from my work with it I understand it to work as follows:
I (a Facebook user) have likes, I have interactions with things (pages, people, websites) and I have personal information (age, gender). An advertiser can target these things (eg: 21 year old male) but they cannot say "Give me the profile URLs of every that likes Minecraft" can they?
For example I currently have this advert displaying on Facebook: http://i.imgur.com/3p9oy.png, Thinkgeek don't know who I am, only Facebook does. Thinkgeek provide the targeting information, Facebook execute it.
If this is the case, how would a company like Thinkgeek ever know to message me about Minecraft things? unless Facebook provided them with my profile, which they do not. The only way to do it would be if they were scraping profiles, which Facebook do not allow and if Facebook were to allow it they would build out such a system (targeted messages).
Country,City,Age,Sex,Relationship Status,Language,Education,Workplace,Platform and finally interest based.
Interest based can be as specific as "Liking" a minecraft page or as broad as gaming. They can target you for using a specific app on facebook or playing a specific game.
They can target every single thing about you.
Edit: It's late.
I've re-read your comment.
It would probably not be a direct message from Thinkgeek , but more like a marketing email with whatever content they provided to facebook.
It would feel weird to receive a direct message from a company and might look sketchy.
A more complex but potentially fairer variation of this idea is to create an ecosystem where each sender posts a bond when delivering a message to an unknown recipient. If the recipient finds the message abusive/spammy, they could flag it as such and claim the bond, otherwise the message is received without a cost to the sender.
I doubt this. And also it's source. IndiaTimes is known for it's ridiculous articles that only make people get paranoid on false rumors. A company like facebook will never do such a thing. Although they allowing brands to send messages to followers is a total different thing.
> Today we’re starting a small experiment to test the usefulness of economic signals to determine relevance. This test will give a small number of people the option to pay to have a message routed to the Inbox rather than the Other folder of a recipient that they are not connected with.
> This message routing feature is only for personal messages between individuals in the U.S. In this test, the number of messages a person can have routed from their Other folder to their Inbox will be limited to a maximum of one per week.
I don't believe that this is simply about enabling advertisers to message users. Until I have more data this is speculation on my part. That said - I believe this is an attempt to expand their nearly-saturated US market by facilitating users to connect with users outside their friend network. Until now this was discouraged and could lead to termination of your account.
More details: There is a new tool tip in my FB account now stating "Your messages get filtered automatically so you mostly see stuff from friends and people you may know in your Inbox. To review your filtering options, click Other > Edit Preferences. Note: These filters replace the old "Who can send you Facebook message"
This article just screams Directly.me , Facebook is lacking originality these days first copying Twitter & now Directly.me it’s too bad they failed on this occasion because Directly.me has a much stronger concept which allows people to search based on Skills, Past experiences, Occupation and Location.. was reading somewhere they got 450,000+ direct connections in just 2 weeks of launch to public.
Also Facebook takes your money, the person on the receiving side gets NOTHING whereas Directly.me gives 80% to the person on the receiving end.
> In a statement posted on Facebook, the website said that it is making several changes to efficiently deliver messages that Facebook users get.
Efficiently deliver messages? What a load of BS. How more efficient can it be than free, instantaneous and in the convenience of the recipient's pocket?
Instead, they should say, they are holding back on all other communication and putting a premium on these paid messaged that only go normally, as they should.
It's the "net neutrality" thing, only this time it's "message neutrality" that we need.
Yes, and I absolutely love the BS from Facebook about "connecting you with things you care about". I wonder if Zuckerberg and co really believe in their "world changing" mission. No, Facebook, there is nothing special about you, you were the first to make a slightly compelling social network (congratulations), and now we're stuck with you because of the network effect. There's nothing more to it than that.
Not necessarily. This is very useful for (atleast) business professionals. Linkedin doesn't provide emails. The only way I can send an 'Inmail' to a person is to upgrade my account. Paying $1 to send a message is a much better option.
That's not the problem. The problem is that they want us to pay to deliver messages to people who already "Liked" our page and thus have a pre-established interest/subscription.
Actually they're both symptoms of the same problem which is the more facebook tries to monetize the sleazier it feels.
LinkedIn probably has the advantage here because it was started explicitly as a resume/business/hustling platform, whereas facebook started as a way for students to keep in touch with friends.
People don't have defenses like spam filters for FB like they do on email, because that channel was relatively clean of unwanted messages.
It's sleazy because they have weaned people off open and free protocols into their walled garden and now they are going in for the kill. It's like how Nestle gave baby formula to African mothers so that they would stop lactating, then they cut off the supply and charged the mothers ridiculous prices so they could continue nourishing their babies.
Advertisers will bid against each other for that coveted message each day, and Facebook will figure out how to maximize bids. For example, even celebrities will be targeted, so companies may end up paying $10,000 per message for them, while a typical person may be $1-$5, or something like that.