What’s the problem with Facebook adverts?

Facebook advertising has amazing advantages. You can target precisely to the demographic you want. Previous advertising network have to guess, but Facebook knows it’s users.

But what’s the problem? Well, I saw a report on advertising that Facebook was getting a lower CTR (Click Through Ratio) compared to other advertising networks. Why is this? Because the adverts aren’t engaging enough. That’s my explanation anyway.

The adverts are all the same, a title, an image and a description. No fancy banner adverts. No creativity. It’s just a bit bland.

An argument in favour of these adverts could be that we have ‘social engagement’, but does that really matter? I saw a Sony Ericsson advert on Facebook. It said that somebody I never actually see, and only vaguely know, liked the brand. I’ll be honest: I don’t care. I’d be much more interested by an interactive advert which showed some of the key selling points of a phone. I’d be more likely to buy one if I knew that it had a 5 megapixel camera, it was running Android and that I could actually call people on it. Having a random like from a random person doesn’t sell the brands or the phones, it just shows me what someone thinks. Which could lead me to question: why does only one of my three hundred and something friends like Sony Ericsson? That’s a really low percentage.

This isn’t a problem with Sony Ericsson, I have a Sony Ericsson phone. It’s a problem I have with these adverts. Are they really working how they should be or is it just a bit of a fad?

Should Facebook open up their “Like” data?

Facebook is generating loads of data about who “like”s what around the internet. Should they be considering opening up that data to allow other people to be able to use it?

How would other people use it?

Website owners could offer “most-liked” content on their site (like “most popular”) based on like data. At the moment there is no way for site owners to obtain the number of times their content has been liked, so it is not possible to do this yet.

Obviously, the biggest threat to Facebook for opening this up would be rivals like Google and Bing. If they could then use this like data to work out which web pages were most popular with real people, then they could potentially revolutionise their search. Facebook wants to stay ahead of the game, and needs to keep their options open.

As I said in my previous post, I think it’s important for people to open up APIs of their data. On the whole, Facebook does this quite well, but there are some bits of data, like this, that they are tactically holding back.

How to find a “tag” in a “post”

Twitter and Facebook both allow you to tag friends in posts. It starts with “@”, has their username and then the rest of the message carries on. I developed a bit of PHP code to identify and link tags for me. Here it is:

Formatting JSON like the Facebook Graph API

A recent project of mine required me to format JSON in a similar way to the Facebook Graph API. So I wrote a bit of PHP code to do the job.

Is privacy such a major concern?

People are constantly fussing about the privacy Facebook offers. When Facebook launched their new auto-customization services, to customize websites automatically, people went crazy. They didn’t like the fact that other websites knew what type of books or films they like.

If I’m honest with you, I don’t mind people knowing that I like the film Ocean’s Eleven or that I listen to Scouting For Girls … or even that I’m not too bothered about reading! If I didn’t want people to know that, I wouldn’t have filled it out on my Facebook profile.

This made me wonder: do people really add stuff to their Facebook accounts that is “secret”? If so, how stupid are you to not have changed your privacy settings?

It’s not like Facebook are giving away actual sensitive information. If Facebook started telling 3rd party sites my email address (without my permission) or the content of private messages I send to my friends, then I’d start getting worried. But they haven’t. They are sharing public information. What’s the big deal?

I suppose other Facebook users aren’t as familiar with tech stuff as myself though, so maybe they were concerned about the website knowing who they were before they’d connected. I wouldn’t know anything about it though, as I tried to use the services but I couldn’t because I’m British.

Approxidates

I realised that I hadn’t posted in a while, so I thought I’d post with news of my latest creation.

It’s a website called Approxidates.

Bascially, it’s a calendar. You have a calendar, your Facebook friends all have calendars. You set the status of a day to either busy or available. Once you’ve done this, you can compare your calendar with your friends’ very quickly and easily, then it highlights the days when all the people are not busy.

It saves time organising events and generally makes life easier.

Syncing the world

With every new bit of technology released in the world, the world is becoming much more connected. This is great! There is, however, a minor issue with all of this. Keeping everything in sync.

I am a regular Facebook user. I like to keep up to date with what my friends are doing, who is commenting on my photos, wall and so on. For this reason, Facebook sends me emails alerting me when things happen. This is great, it keeps me informed.

But what about when I’m not at my laptop? I get SMS updates to my phone. I have also downloaded Facebook Notifications for my Macbook.

What’s the problem? I get notified several times about the same action. I get a text, an email and a little notification. I also get a notification on Facebook itself. I don’t need to be told 4 times about 1 little thing that’s going on. I think we need a system which keeps everything in sync. If I’m out of the house, it sends me the text, and not the other notifications. If I’m at my computer it sends me a Facebook notification. If I’m not at my computer then it sends me an email.

Now this isn’t a problem I have with Facebook, it is the same with all websites. And with the current infrastructure, it is very difficult to do any different. Email is a very old system – it has been around years before I was born! SMS messages adopt a very similar structure to emails, and this is okay, but it doesn’t utilize the available modern technologies in a way which makes people’s lives easier!

Open Graph Protocol

Facebook have recently launched their Open Graph protocol. It is designed to connect websites to people’s social graph via Facebook more easily.

I was recently implementing it on my website, NewHaze, and I found it surprisingly easy to use. It is a completely different concept to the older model. But I think it is an improvement. It is much lighter and a much more logical approach to accessing the data available.

I am, however, concerned about what data exactly I will be able to access from my website. I was thinking that if somebody doesn’t permit me from access certain information, would the code on my site work? It’s just a small concern, and I’m sure it will be fine!

I also love the new authorization screen, it’s much cleaner and nicer to look at… and only one screen rather than having to be redirected from page to page in order to grant loads of permissions!

In all, I am a pretty big fan of the new protocol, it all seems to be working pretty well!

5 Facebook groups you shouldn’t join

1) “Facebook needs a dislike button!”

These groups are pointless. Whether or not Facebook needs a dislike button, they won’t build one. Here are my three reasons why:

• People will complain
• It is too negative – saying you dislike what somebody is saying
• Where do they stop? Dislike, love, hate, disagree, agree…

So face it guys, they aren’t going to build a dislike button. If you really want people to be able to dislike your statuses, try using the app Status Magic.

2) “We need a million members to stop Facebook from charging!”

Facebook has 350,000,000 members. Why would they charge? It would be suicidal – people would stop using Facebook and move to another free alternative. All popular social networks in the past have been free and it is highly unlikely that Facebook would be any different.

3) “Get your name in the Guinness World Records in largest Facebook group!”

Really? You believe this? If they got 10 million members you think that they would print 10 million names? If not, then don’t join the group! The book of Guinness World Records has never had a “largest Facebook group” before. Yes, they may add one although even if they did, they wouldn’t print millions of names. And there are so many of these groups that it is unlikely for any one of them to grow so big that it would be the biggest group in the world.

4) “Bring back the old Facebook!”

It happens every time Facebook update the website. They aren’t going to update the site and then think “hang on, it isn’t an improvement…” and then downgrade again, are they? So use your head and don’t join the group! Besides, most of the changes are actually quite good.

5) Anything with “Official” in it

“Official petition…” or “Official group…”. Chances are, it probably isn’t official. The official label often gets stuck with any of the above groups and more! 99 times of of 100, it isn’t official. If you aren’t sure, if they are official they will probably have a website, see if that links back to the Facebook group.

So use your head, stop joining pointless groups and enjoy Facebook as a social network and not as a group-joining network!

Play games & connect with Facebook

Facebook has had its service Facebook Connect launched for a year now. There are many websites which use the power of Facebook to integrate friends and social features into a website. Here are a few examples:

JibJab – send fun cards to your friends starring… your friends!

Widget Box – Widget Box enables users to promote widgets to their friends using Facebook.

FACEinHOLE – Similar to JibJab, put faces in pictures and send to friends!

Facebook has recently been promoting simple integrations of Facebook Connect within websites using the “Connect Playground” and “Connect Widgets”. One example of this integration is in Miniman Gaming, which uses the social commenting features to enable users to easily comment on games using their Facebook account.

If you want to see Connect integration in Miniman Gaming, check out a game page.