The Facebook Effect Part 3

Kirkpatrick beings the third and final part of his book by discussing platforms. Platforms, as he describes opens facebook up to hundreds and thousands of programmers to develop their ideas into a UGI based library with tons of potential for all types of applications. Kirkpatrick mentions several of which that are actually used today including Causes, Chat, and photos. While he goes on to describe this unique aspect of facebook, what I really found interesting in the third part of the reading was his input on advertisement.
“It is merely a useful shorthand, as in the Sandberg sessions, to refer to a process in which companies spend money to get people more interested in their products.” (Kirkpatrick 245) In my opinion, facebook has a huge advantage in the advertising world. Usually, the case is that producers have to aim their advertisements to a certain group of consumers looking for a certain type of product. However, using facebook profiles, that list “activities” “interests” “movies” ”music” etc…facebook now has identified its users to producers. Generally speaking…producers no longer have to “shop” for their consumers or make their ads extensively broad, instead, they can gear their ads to a select group of individuals. For example, in my facebook profile, I listed tennis as one of my activities and interests. So, essentially a company such as tenniswarehouse could offer its ads to my margin as oppose to someone who has no interest in tennis at all! What is driving facebook’s powerful advertising dominancy is its gigantic user base. The problem with a lot of adware agencies is that it’s tough to get the attention of everyone! With billboards and newspaper ads, it’s more of a hit or miss kind of thing. But with facebook profiles, producers can now hit who they want to hit every time. The algorithm is similar to that Amazon’s in that it memorizes what users want to see and keeps feeding them with relevant or similar products; its actually quite revolutionizing from the paper coupon books, flyers, and other now primal ways to get people’s attention. (Kirkpatrick 264)
Not only are computers generating these specified ads, but also now users can specify exactly what they want to see. When you close one of the ads generated by the algorithm, it will ask you why you don’t want it: “You have removed this ad. Why didn't you like it? Uninteresting, Misleading, Offensive, Repetitive, Other.” I find it amazing that this is where the future of advertising is going, and I am very curious to see what it is going to look like in about ten years or less! As Dave Tapscott noted, “this is not about friendships, this is changing the way we orchestrate capabilities in society to innovate and to created goods and services.” (Kirkpatrick 265)