Jan 11
18
Facebook’s Business As Usual
Facebook rolled out a “feature” very quietly last week. They posted a notice to their developer blog saying that they were now giving applications a way to get it’s user’s phone number and mailing address. Today they’ve announced that they are pausing that feature until they can more it’s users more aware of when they’ll be sharing this information.
Why did they suspend this feature so quickly? Of course, I have no inside information but I believe that it’s because news got out of the developer community and into the population at large. Surprisingly enough, it seems there wasn’t many people that were just waiting to give their phone numbers to advertisers and applications. Keep in mind, that many of these phone numbers are cell phone numbers.
Marketers are very excited about Facebook becoming so popular. For years Internet Marketers have been looking for an alternative to Google to spend their ad dollars. Most of Google’s users don’t pay anything to user their services. The same can be said for Facebook users. Very few of them pay any money to Facebook. Both of these companies make most of their money from advertisers.
I think you’d be surprised to learn that Google doesn’t treat it’s advertisers like kings. I know of several marketers who were spending tens of thousands of dollars a month to advertise with Google and had their campaigns stopped. If Google believes that you are not giving their users a good experience through your ads, they stop them. Google’s idea is to protect their users.
Facebook on the other hand seems to be interested in making it a marketers paradise. This isn’t a Facebook vs Google article. This is just my opinion that the users of Facebook should take a look at who the company is trying to make happy.
I predict Facebook has less than five years left to enjoy its position in the Internet. By 2016, Facebook will look completely different and will not be the place you go to several times a day.