back to article Will Facebook target ads across the interwebs?

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is downplaying the possibility of the social networking giant rolling out a web-wide advertising network that targets ads based on your behavior and the behavior of your Facebook friends. On Wednesday evening, during an appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit in downtown San Francisco, Zuckerberg was …

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  1. Justin Clements

    Fascinating Times

    We really do live in fascinating times.

    We have Google chipping away at Apple, and now Facebook chipping away at Google. And Microsoft falling from grace each day as it's monopolies fall away to its own predators.

    Facebook really is Google's nemesis though.

    1. Tigra 07
      Stop

      RE: Justin Clements

      Google may be slated a bit for the WiFi stunt but do people really want to replace Google with Facebook?

      Say goodbye to any privacy with Facebook in that position, they can't be allowed to expand into other services while they treat personal information as they do.

      A world where everyone can see everyones profiles, pictures, movements, houses etc is a world where burglary is rife and id theft and fraud are a daily occurence.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Title

      Don't write off M$ so easily.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "I have no idea when or if it would make sense to do something like it."

    This guy is a billion dollar CEO?

    "Hello Mr CEO, so what is your business plan?"

    > I don't know

    "Isn't that important?"

    > Ummmmm.... I think you are a bitch.

    its PATHETIC.

    "Most industries are going to be rethought to be social and designed around people"

    You mean, like they are now? You do know what people are don't you? Those creatures that have a tendancy to hang around your business doing the work? You might see them next time you open those two holes in your face that us "people" like to call "eyes".

    "We'll get value back proportional to what we put in."

    My penis is proportional to my balls. I wonder where I can put that.

    See, it's easy to make up retarded sound bites. I wonder if that qualifies me to be a CEO too. I will ride around the office on a pony! weeeeeeee.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      title

      "My penis is proportional to my balls."

      However that proportion can change in both size and direction depending on external market forces.

      1. dssf

        That can change on

        Markedly external forces, too, hehehhe

    2. wim

      he did it you didn't

      I think it is ridiculous how some hack on Zuckerberg. Ok he is is probably not the most social adapted person.

      On the other hand he build his company from scratch (or stole it from friends) and actually did something. I wonder how many of his outspoken enemies have a successful business.

      To make myself clear: I don't like facebook nor google and the invasive behaviour these companies show in selling personal data to their customers.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Badgers

      "I have no idea when or if it would make sense to do something like it."

      If salesmen and confidence tricksters like Zuckerberg stop spewing ridiculous nonsensical buzzword strewn diarrhea theres a danger that investors and financiers might actually notice how little monetary value or raison d'etre companies like Facebook have.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Stop

        You missed the bit

        where the linked article told you that :

        "Facebook pulled in a $700 to $800 million in revenue during 2009, according to a report citing two sources familiar with the situation."

        Now I know Revenue doesn't equal profit i dont call a turn over of 7 - 8 HUNDRED MILLION dollars a year "little monetary value "

        Don't get me wrong, Farce book doesnt come within a mile of my PC, but I do see that it is a well oiled money making machine

        Also dont foget that Facebook is a PRIVATE company so those investors & Financiers (who, incidentally, despite the last Dot Com bubble would sell their own mothers to own a peice of Facebook!) you talk about, not a problem for Zuckerberg and his mates

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          You missed the bit

          You've highlighted the issue - its a private company with secretive and obsfucated accounting practices - we actually have very little idea about the true financial picture or value.

          Given, there's a novelty factor (and revenue) as some marketeers experiment with "innovative" ways to distribute their beloved brand messages lured by unproven promises of measureably improved campaign effectiveness via "profiled" ad targetting.

          I'd be very suprised if the paltry ad-revenue comes close to covering the cost of establishing and operating a global high tech dependant company like Facebook though and it remains to be seen that their ad-model will materialise into anything like a sustainable business. How long would they last if they were to charge people to use their service?

          Facebook smells like a speculative derivitive type investment based on future yet to realised value - who would bet against it suffering a catastrophic value crash in the manner of geocities and myspace?

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          peanuts

          "Facebook pulled in a $700 to $800 million in revenue during 2009, according to a report citing two sources familiar with the situation."

          The Harry Potter film franchise is the highest grossing film series of all time when not adjusted for inflation, with over $5.4 billion in worldwide receipts.

          Harry Potter doesn't have ~1400 employees on its payroll or costs associated with >30k servers... Bitch!

  3. Tim Almond
    FAIL

    How?

    "A Facebook-driven AdSense competitor is just what Google doesn't want. And you can bet it will happen"

    How? If Facebook is about "social" how does that work when I visit someone's website, especially if I'm not logged into Facebook?

    AdSense is simple because it just uses keywords from the site. Which not only means that someone doesn't have to log in, but also that the ads are related to the content. This pretty much does the same job as user profiling.

    1. Pandy06269

      Not true

      It doesn't just use site keywords.

      About a month ago I was looking at holidays to Canada - so I looked at the likes of Air Canada, British Airways, Canadian Affair etc.

      Pretty much straight after that evening, every site I visit that uses Adwords now has some reference to Canada or (in the case of Sourceforge and YouTube) every advert I see is for Canadian Affair - including a hilarious example I saw on Sourceforge where no less than 4 Adwords adverts on the same page were all for CA!

      Scary stuff.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Not scary, just useless & irritating

        Especially after you already changed your mind, dialled a flight booking reservation company and booked tickets to Spain instead.

        Spam, spam, spam, green eggs, spam...

  4. Bilgepipe
    Gates Horns

    Zuckerberk

    Zuckerberk and his nauseating website are the embodiment of everything that is wrong with modern corporations. He doesn't have customers or users, he has pieces of data to be sold and manipulated for his own ends. And he's fooled them into willingly handing that data over of their own volition.

    The sooner Facebook and everything it stands for disappears, the better. Sadly, peoples inherent need to pimp their egos on a daily basis means that won't happen.

  5. Robinson

    Here's the problem...

    Yes, and Microsoft has 2% of the shares in FB (I think it paid $240m for it a few years back).

    I'm already annoyed at targeted ads - i.e. ads that follow me around from one website to the next (stalking me). It's very disconcerting and more than a little creepy.

    Anyway I don't use FB, although I have an account up there. My old school "friends" were annoying - they got deleted. My current `friends' bragtastic lifestyle updates are annoying, so they got deleted too. I don't want to know what my relatives are getting up to; I mean I can catch up in other ways - and I don't want them to know what I'm getting up to either. So they all got deleted. I don't want my work colleagues knowing what I get up to and I couldn't give a flying **** what they get up to either, so they all got deleted.

    Go Facebook!

  6. dssf

    Of those "500 million users"

    I bet they are really looking at 500m ACCOUNTS. Probably 20% are spam-related, just to get a presense IN facebook. Probably 30% of the total "accounts" are abandoned, or duplicates that were set up to do "settings and privacy checks" to see what facebook is up to now...

    I'm only there to post or repost links of stuff i find interesting, and to post some ascerbic comments about a few companies, and to "like" some situations my friends feel happy about.

    I ignore 99% of the ads. If i'm interested in something i'm thinking about, i'll look it up. Just because i TYPE about something doesn't mean i'll be "impressed upon" by sleuthfully or stealthily-targed ads. I ignore most of them out of spite, and sometimes generate junk notes or junk comments to see what happens.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      yes

      and that 500m accounts number is artificially inflated further by the fact that you can't actually remove your account. It's dreadful, they used to at least pretend they would delete your stuff after x days. Now they don't even bother lying to you, they just say "you're my bitch and how do you like that?"

      And the "download your account" feature (whatever they call) is a carefully crafted lie too. They give you a link to a zip file that contains everything you have posted, minus what you have deleted (which I am sure they keep for themselves). So you look at the file and say "this isn't too bad, there's hardly anything about me here".

      Wrong. The transaction logs and derived data are what is valuable to them and you better believe they know the exact second you pooned your new girlfriend for the first time. They know exactly what brand of cigarette she smoked afterward, and that you went to take a shit that took 3 minutes and 45 seconds. A little runny. Maybe you should buy this diarrhea medicine? Is that stuff in the file they send you? No. Do they keep it in a secret file that they can access? Yes. So why do they send you the file at all? It is what they call perception management, aka lying.

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