Brands among sheep

A few days back, I read a post on Adage, about how Facebook has become a place to collect friends. A large part of the post was about how people one barely knew became ‘friends’, how we all seem to be involved in each others’ lives in superficial ways, merely by sharing stuff we do, how we are failing to live the moment because we have to update our status first. 🙂 Not surprisingly, he was burnt at the comments stake.

At some level, the author is right about the ‘collecting friends’ part. This would explain the success of Burger King’s ‘Whopper Sacrifice‘ app, in which sacrificing (deleting) 10 friends would get you a sandwich.  Somehow, Facebook didn’t seem to find it that cool, and took action.  Meanwhile, Facebook has been trying its bit to customise the news feed by allowing ‘more/less about’ options for status updates. In addition to the grouping of friends, an obvious Orkut like classification of friends, acquaintances etc might help too. Meanwhile, I read about what seems an interesting new network that aims to put an end to the random friend addition – hipstr.

Meanwhile, the post actually did raise a couple of interesting queries, which were lost in what was seen as an anti-Facebook rant – one, in this communication avalanche that’s happening among consumers, is it possible for brands to squeeze in their communication at all? And are friends becoming the new platform for advertising? I’ve seen several Facebook ads that use friends as an ad platform, and most of the ads that I see with my friends’ endorsement are without their knowledge. (xyz uses abc app) I dont think that’s the scalable model we’d want.

The easy answer to the first question (as described in many comments) is context and value creation. But in terms of advertising, I think (and this is highly debatable) Facebook lacks a definite context. I update, I share photos, I write on the Wall, I play a few word games, try a quiz out and so on. So I wonder whether context can play as good a role as it does on search, because the intent for which I frequent Facebook is completely different. It made me wonder if an all encompassing generic network like Facebook will find it difficult to be of commerical use? Like I commented on a good discussion on social media we had on Twitter, perhaps, in the realms of social networking, the scope is for vertical networks (there are many which’ve already popped up) that cater to more specific interests. The version 1 of that would be LinkedIn (business networking). The scope for context and value addition could be much greater there.

But perhaps better mining over a period of time will give feasible solutions like say, integrating the birthday calendar with a gifting opportunity. So if my friend abc has his birthday today, and is a fan of a particular product/service on Facebook, then Facebook will ask me if I want to gift him that product/service. No, not just virtually, really. Or say, a status update of mine says I’m having a house party, and the Pizza Hut app sends me a mail asking me if I’d want to consider its services. Of course, design, privacy issues etc are to be kept in mind.

I’m also hoping that the above premise will be taken to a whole new level with Facebook Connect. Mashable had a good post a few days back on 10 great implementations of Facebook Connect. It includes a traditional media brand (CNN) and an energy drink brand (Red Bull). Perhaps Connect will bring in the much required context.

until next time, dont throw a sheep 😉