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European Tech Analysis

“Facebook hints at how it could become a big player in the ride-sharing business”

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Quartz:

In a patent application published today—first surfaced by the legal technology firm ClientSide—Facebook outlines a system for setting up carpools for people attending the same event.

For now, it’s worth remembering: Many companies in the “sharing economy“—including AirBnb and Uber itself—currently use Facebook as a login and user verification system, so it’s not infeasible that Facebook could just cut out the middle man and use its own network in the future.

Sure. But they’d be a bit late to the party. (Certainly not too late, but still.)

Facebooks ‘Removing The Ability To Pull Friends’ Data’

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Facebooks ‘Removing The Ability To Pull Friends’ Data’

The why part here is important:

“Removing The Ability To Pull Friends’ Data
Facebook announced plans to stop letting developers pull data from users’ friends, such as their photos, birthdays, status updates, and checkins.

Why? Because the idea that anyone could give someone else’s data to a developer without their permission was always kind of shady. This should boost a perception of privacy on the Facebook platform, but also deny developers the ability to build apps like photo album browsers, search engines, calendars, and location maps that could compete with Facebook’s own products.”

Privacy leads to less data portability which in turn leads to potential monopoly rents.

Twitter and Facebook indirectly exposed to any changes to in-app purchases

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Twitter and Facebook indirectly exposed to any changes to in-app purchases

Ben Thompson:

“While Facebook’s ad network is, I’m guessing, broader than just app installs, the reality is that app installs dominate Facebook’s mobile revenue as well. And, the primary types of apps that advertise for installs are free-to-play games, looking for the specific customer type who will potentially spend hundreds of dollars on in-app purchases.

This, then, raises a frightening specter for both Twitter and Facebook: they are indirectly exposed to any changes Apple or Google may make in their policy with regards to in-app purchases”

Fascinating point.

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According to several people I’ve spoken to, Facebook found during testing that users who were switched to the new News Feed tended to spend less time on the site. Specifically, they spent less time browsing areas outside of the News Feed, like their friends’ profiles and event pages, which are currently some of the most visited parts of Facebook. After an investigation into the problem by Facebook’s data team, they discovered that the new News Feed was performing too well. It was performing so well from a design standpoint that users no longer felt the need to browse areas outside of the News Feed as often, so they were spending less time on the site. Unfortunately, this change in user behavior led to fewer advertisement impressions, which led, ultimately, to less revenue.

Dustin Curtis in Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

Fascinating if true. Facebooks once famously introduced the news feed despite its function of decreasing page views in the short term. German competitors like studiVZ did not introduce something similar because they didn’t want to lose any precious page impression.

If Facebook reached a point where they don’t innovate on the news feed because it is too successful it is time to worry about the company.

It makes them ripe for disruption. Especially now with the shift to mobile where the greatest feed will win.

http://newnetland.com/2014-03-according-to-several-people-ive-spoken-to/

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Advertisers in the beta have seen lower costs per action than with traditional targeting options. Lookalike Audiences can be created after an advertiser has uploaded a list of first-party data, such as customer email addresses, phone numbers or user IDs to make a Custom Audience. Facebook’s algorithms analyze the Custom Audience and produce another audience segment that is likely to have a similar customer profile. The advertiser can then create any Facebook ad type and target it to the Lookalike Audience. No personally identifiable information is shared back with advertisers and Lookalike Audiences can only be used within Facebook, not exported for email marketing or other ad targeting.

Facebook ‘Lookalike Audiences’ help advertisers reach users similar to current customers, others in their database

Tools like this can turn Facebooks advertising offer  into a cash cow similar to Googles AdSense. Last not least because Facebook, same as with Google and AdWords and AdSense, is the only current provider for something like that on a big enough scale.

And you need scale for a matching of audiences to be attractive to advertisers.

So, this could be huge.

http://newnetland.com/2013-02-advertisers-in-the-beta-have-seen-lower-costs-per/