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New here? Employee Evolution is a blog written by Ryan Healy. Ryan is a Co-Founder of Brazen Careerist, the webs #1 social network for young professionals. Ryan speaks with organizations on best practices for recruiting and retaining Generation Y and how to effectively use social media to reach your target market. To contact Ryan, please visit our contact page.
According to The New York Times, 1,500 Facebook users have decided to take matters into their own hands and run ads on their personal Facebook pages. Weblo, an ad network that sells ads onto people’s blogs and social networking profile pages is helping people run these ads.
Truthfully, I’m not surprised. This seems like the next logical step in social networking. People spend hours, days and even weeks updating their profiles, adding pictures, searching their friend’s pages, etc. All of this sharing of personal information is what makes Facebook, Facebook.
Zuckerberg and his team created the shell, the users created the content, and now Facebook is valued at $15 billion. It makes total sense that users should be compensated in some way.
The fact of the matter is we all work for Facebook. There’s no contract, and we’re not employees, but that $15 billion valuation has not only come from the thousands of hours put in by Facebook employees, but by the millions of hours put in by Facebook users.
It seems that the biggest issue Facebook faces is determining how to capitalize on all of the personal information they have. Last month’s Beacon program was greeted with some serious backlash. Zuckerberg eventually trashed the original program and wrote an apology blog post.
However, they’re obviously on to something. I have no problem promoting a product or service if I believe in it. Look at the jobs page of Employee Evolution for example. We had no contact with The Motley Fool, Best Buy or W.L. Gore, yet we still advised all of our readers to apply to those companies. I would have no problem telling my friends on Facebook that my new pair of Nikes are amazing and everyone should buy a pair.
Our generation grew up in an age of corporate branding like no other. Just look at college football, we’ve got the Allstate National Championship game, The AT&T Cotton Bowl and The AutoZone Liberty Bowl. I see these names and it doesn’t bother me at all, that’s just the way things are. But I’m fully conscious of the money and branding involved on both sides.
Thanks to Myspace, Facebook and blogging, we’re entering the age of personal branding, and there is money to be made on all sides. Facebook can undoubtedly stay enormously wealthy by selling access to millions of people. Companies can continue to sell ads to boost sales and increase brand awareness. But what hasn’t been accounted for is the generation of entrepreneurs that Facebook has helped create who will not and should not sit back and let the corporations make all the money.
As far as I’m concerned, Facebook is totally right to think that young people will not mind advertising brands to their friends, but they’re wrong to think that we won’t start demanding a cut.
Leave your thoughts here. (13 responses)
- 1 Pingback on Dec 19th, 2007 at 11:23 am
- 2 Pingback on Dec 20th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
- 3 Pingback on Feb 7th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I’m not sure the word to use is “advertising” products to their friends. The better word may be “endorse,” as in, like product endorsements. But even then, youngsters wouldnt just endorse something unless they get paid for it, or personally use the product. I fall into the latter category (barring any sudden million dollar product endorsement contract of course. Which is obviously unlikely).
And although I do like to recommend and endorse specific products I use and love (for ex. apple macs, havaiiana flipflops, etc) I am not so sure I would be willing to endorse anything for money. For one, it may ruin one’s credibility. And secondly, people may be more wary about the item endorsed if they know money is involved.
Young people may want to advertise and get a cut for it, but that may mean that it wont be as effective nor as believable.
We don’t all work for Facebook. Some of us don’t have a Facebook page.
I know this wasn’t the point of the post. But Ryan, don’t forget to take a step back sometimes and look at the bigger picture.
Well, for one I also don’t have a Facebook page, and refuse to get one. I still have MySpace, but it’s at a rather private, anonymous level. But to think these companies will give us a cut is rather ambitious. We’ve all been walking billboards for years, whether it’s large logos on our t-shirts and shoes, the free Apple logo sticker that comes with every iPod that people gladly stick on their car, or the emblems on our cars. Heck, at my desk right now, I see the HP logo on my monitor, printer, and desktop PC, and the Compaq logo on my server, and the Motorola & T-Mobile logos on my cell phone (I could keep going). The difference here is that I willingly PAID for all those products, and yet I still advertise them, whether I like it or not. Since places like MySpace and Facebook are free for the user, I can’t see them paying ME for anything.
Not to mention, I’ve seen some of the horrible crap people put together on a MySpace page. It looks like visual garbage. Add in the strange names, possibly inappropriate pictures and content, and it all makes for something I wouldn’t want my product associated with.
The original Facebook generation has been advertising for free their whole lives. This is the generation in which Abercrombie and Fitch clothing became popular turning all of these kids into walking billboards for the clothing line. No other clothing line had been so successful at plastering their name on all of their clothing and getting kids to walk around with it.
Obviously not everyone has a Facebook profile, but that is not the point of the post.
I’m not exactly sure where this will go, maybe we won’t “Advertsise” products and take a percentage share in the traditional sense, but all signs point to the the fact that the future of social networking/Web 2.0 will involve some sort of profit sharing or small payment to users.
Here is some background material (Thanks to Nathan Snell for the links)
www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/04/youtube-launches-revenue-sharing-partners-program-but-no-pre-rolls/
www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/10/youtube-shares-the-wealth-with-everyone-apply-now/
www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/13/google-preparing-to-launch-game-changing-wikipedia-meets-squidoo-project/
I think Gen Xers would hate this, but Millenials wouldn’t really mind that much. I was at a party this weekend where this topic sort of came up. The people were complaining that sporting events has sponsers that were incorporated into the name, commercials that use music from the 80s to sell their product, and concert venues that are now named after corporations (i.e. “Pine Knob” in Michigan is now know as “DTE.”)
Generation X was the first generation to be marketed to hardcore as kids. I think by the time the Millenials came around the childhood marketing thing had the kinks worked out a little better. But Xers are on Facebook a lot. They will grudgingly deal with the corporatization of that, too. By now, it just accepted that eventually everything is tainted by corporate America.
On a personal note, thanks for mentioning the Auto Zone Liberty Bowl! Go Knights!
I agree with you on the Facebook note. But I want to be in charge of what I promote. I’ll show off my Nike’s all day long but the hotel that I’m staying in during my vacation should be kept private. Facebook will figure it out, they didn’t give them all those bucks for nothing.
Apparently this was a timely post. Ads Click, just introduced “Micro Social ads” for Facebook, allowing users to advertise to their friends and keep 80%.
Check it out on Tech Crunch
www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/17/ads-click-introduces-microsocialads-in-beta-now-get-paid-to-spam-your-friends-on-facebook/
The question I have to ask is when will the pushback start? Facebook is a good microcosim of all of Web 2.0 and how users are reacting to new advertising. The News Feed created a stir, applications have become so ubiquitous that I can’t find a damn thing on most of my friends’ pages anymore, Beacon nearly ruined the site, and now these micro-targeted ads are invading. They remind me of the stupid Vibrant Ads that are ruining my ability to read newspapers online. When did we become so complacent with having advertising shoved down our throats? Why are we so open to letting any company who wants intrude on us whenever they so please? It’s ridiculous.
@Kelvin - Good point on credibility of endorsement when it comes to money being involved. Overall, I think if a person were to be monetizing their own space, they would have likely established some form of credibility. For example: I have seen a variety of bloggers endorse a product in a credible way. Fact of the matter is, if people begin to feel it’s not credible, that person loses the audience and thus the money that comes with endorsements.
@Norcross - While people may be walking billboards as you say, it is generally done in a more willing manner as they associate themselves with a particular brand (kind of a boutique mentality). It’s a display of identity. A bi-product of that is free marketing for that company, yes (or you could argue that free marketing also serves as a bi-product for identity, either or). The point is more or less exactly that MySpace and Facebook are free for the user AND that they monetize us. The underlying element here is that they make it free and we create their content. We populate their pages and then they make money off of it.
However, Norcross, I think your point about brand association with particular MySpace pages (though Facebook tends to be much better) is a great one. They often look like they were made by a 6 year old who had his coloring book taken away from him
In the case of personal oriented social networks (FB, MySpace, Hi5, Bebo, etc) I would say that may be one of the biggest hurdles.
@Suzanne - That sounds like a very interesting conversation! I wish I had been there to be a part of it
One thing I had thought about recently is the concept of sports endorsements (Mountain Dew, Nike, etc sponsoring athletes) but applied to a slightly different medium. Eg. Apple sponsors a straight A student. Dell sponsors an ambitious Gen Y businessman, etc. I suppose these things happen in very small forms (scholarships) but I am speaking on a wider scale (more like the walking billboard Norcross alluded to). Anyway, I digress a bit there. I think it’s a pretty accurate assessment that corporations are buying their way into places more and more. That is in part why the notion of social media marketing is becoming increasingly popular. It’s a flip of the mindset. etc etc.
Overall I think Ryan’s thoughts on the potential shift to sharing the revenue is very interesting. Perhaps I am overstating this a bit, but it could be one of the most significant shifts in internet business models. This is a shift that may very well happen, and soon (read: within the year) as Google rolls out Knol (something similar to wikipedia that offers rev sharing with the author), rev share with YouTube, and so forth. Then again, it may just flop as the potential profits for revenue sharing may just be too slim (interesting read on Joe Duck’s blog: joeduck.com/2007/12/10/youtube-you-cash-not-much/)