back to article Facebook killing off Sponsored Results in search pages

Facebook has confirmed that it will drop the sale of Sponsored Results in its search pages, a "feature" that plenty of El Reg readers have been less than happy about. "In keeping with the goal of streamlining our ad products, starting in July advertisers will no longer be able to buy sponsored results," the company told El Reg …

COMMENTS

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  1. Daniel B.
    Unhappy

    Questions

    It is one of the few things that is actually useful, and they're axing it? They had already ruined it somewhat in that they made it a Pages-only feature; we used to dole out these for a lot of stuff. But it seems FB doesn't like this feature.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A win for the consumer or just FB re-adjusting its trousers...?

    FB is ...."still trying out ways to extract cash from users, which will go some way towards placating investors and help fill up the post-IPO hole in Facebook's share price. Earlier this month it said it would be cutting the number of ad units from 27 to less than half that in an effort to simplify matters"

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: A win for the consumer or just FB re-adjusting its trousers...?

      Why can't it be both? The most effective ads are ones that get noticed but don't irritate people by getting in the way.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A win for the consumer or just FB re-adjusting its trousers...?

        Tell that to marketers who say there is no such thing as a bad Ad as long as people are talking about it!

  3. h3

    I think Facebook has succeeded in being worse for society generally than Murdock managing to make the Sun the most popular newspaper in Britain whenever he did. (Which I thought was a pretty depressing thing).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Personally I always felt that the sun being able to call itself a newspaper was the depressing thing..along with McDonald's being able to call itself a restaurant

    2. LarsG
      Meh

      The Sun @h3

      The fact that the Sun is the most read paper in Britain in indicative of the of the education system which has been dumbed down over the past 40 years by successive left wing Governments with the collusion of the teaching profession, who instead of aspiring to be better, dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.

      Don't blame Murdoch for it, he's just the businessman who found a market for it.

      An example was hearing a History teacher telling a class the evacuation from Dunkirk happened in WW1.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The Sun @h3

        "The fact that the Sun is the most read paper in Britain in indicative of the of the education system which has been dumbed down over the past 40 years by successive left wing Governments [...]"

        The Sun has always been a right-wing newspaper. In the last forty years Parliament has been a politically right-wing government - either Conservative or New Labour. The readers of the Sun were typically conservative (small 'c') in their views.

        As Minister for Education it was Margaret Thatcher who oversaw the wholesale implementation of large Comprehensive Schools. They absorbed the Technical High School's and academic High Schools - plus most Grammar Schools. The GCE 'O' Levels were replaced by GCSE's in 1988 - when she had been Prime Minister for a decade.

      2. JDX Gold badge

        Re: The Sun @h3

        I don't think anyone who uses the phrase "dumbed down" is in any position to complain about changes to the standards of education since they attended school.

      3. Suburban Inmate
        Childcatcher

        @ LarsG and others.

        Hop on to YouTube and have a gander at what the late George Carlin had to say about "our owners" and "the reason education sucks [and] it's never gonna get any better". Here.

        In there is the reason education is working just fine for those running it, helped along by the advancements of technology used to de-skill the workforce and money-as-debt to keep people slogging along to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

        Finally, "Occasional Letter Number One" is well worth a Googling.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Lars

    Lars,

    if what you say is true and the current state of our Education system is down to "successive left wing governments"*, i have to admit to being confused.

    Given the last remotely left wing Government left power in 1979, and that during the last 40 years i can only really recognise perhaps 5 or 6 years of that same "left wing government" - that's less than 15% of that time in power, wouldn't you have thought the right wing governments that followed might have had the gumption to do something about it during their time in power?

    Better though I suppose to point the finger falsely than accept the fact that Britain as a country has generally lost its way over the past 40 years regardless of who's been in power. In my day.... Etc. etc... ;-)

    * and no, new Labour, with its homage to Margaret Thatcher was arguably to the right of Ted Heath's regime so they really can't count as anything close to left wing in the way say Wilson or Callaghan were..

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: @Lars

      "Given the last remotely left wing Government left power in 1979, and that during the last 40 years i can only really recognise perhaps 5 or 6 years of that same "left wing government" [...]"

      The Comprehensive School system was a dismantling of the 1944 Education Act's tripartite secondary system. The first casualties were the Secondary Technical Schools in the1960s - many of which had equal 11+ selection criteria to the academic High School's and Grammar Schools. The Secondary Technical Schools' higher running costs for additional specialist teachers and equipment was undoubtedly a factor.

      That change was principally a 1960s Labour policy of Harold Wilson's Government. However - there were many in that party who saw the 11+ selection, albeit flawed, as a valuable vehicle for working class social mobility.

      It can be claimed that the Comprehensive inertia was unstoppable by 1979 - with Local Authorities committed to the change by then. The amalgamation of schools into larger units offered potential economies of scale at a time when the country had an economic crisis.

      In spite of Margaret Thatchers personal faith in Grammar Schools she did little to promote them. Her Government replaced the GCE 'O'Level and CSE by the GCSE in 1988.

      The education problem remains the same as it has been for a century. How to provide an education that allows a child to reach its potential - and provide a suitable workforce of adults. The economic obstacles have been how combine the ethos of a small school with the cost of providing good teachers in a wide range of subjects. The final, and most important, factor is instilling the general population with the importance of their children being educated.

      **Declaration of vested interest:

      I am a working class lad who benefited from an 11+ Technical School Education through to "A" Levels. It was one of the last boys' Technical Schools to be turned into a larger mixed Comprehensive in 1970. It subsequently served a much smaller parochial area rather than the whole city. From the anecdotes of teachers and pupils there was then a decline in discipline, academic rigour, and extra-curricula interests. The technical and science subjects became less intensive too.

      1. Captain Queeg

        Re: @Lars

        Unstoppable by 1979? Yes, of course Mrs T was *such* a weak leader wasn't she...

        :-/

        1. Captain Queeg

          Re: @Lars

          Soory, to be clear that doesn't mean I lay the blame at Mrs T.'s door to any greater extent than any other PM who's presided over the slow erosion of educational standards since the war. As far as I'm concerned they're all equally culpable of failing to invest in youth...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    milk snatcher abolished grammar schools because thicko Tories couldn't get their kids into them...

  6. John Crisp

    " Personally I always felt that the sun being able to call itself a newspaper was the

    depressing thing..along with McDonald's being able to call itself a restaurant"

    And windows an operating system....

    :)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Please...

      .. no Eadon-baiting, or Eadoning at all.

  7. Killraven
    WTF?

    Why?

    I find it more mind-boggling that anybody would use Facebook to do an internet search.

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