It was inevitable that at some point someone would figure out an advertising model for social networks; even though the networks themselves haven’t succeeded in doing it yet. The problem is that it makes those very networked friendship a total mockery that now have a dollar value placed on them.
While companies like SocialMedia use spun out phrases like “.. our goal is not to put people inside of ads as a gimmick, as gimmicks die and provide little value to anyone. Instead, we want to facilitate real conversation and interaction around certain products and brands.”. Even though that quote of Dave Gentzel in Paul Glazowski’s post on Mashable says all the right social media buzzwords the fact is your friends are now being used to hawk you products. Everyone now has a ranking within social networks and through this FriendRank system you get served up what is being termed as “social banner ads”.
Not only are your friends now pimping products to you they can also gain points every time you click on an ad they have suggested through this FriendRank system. As Matt Marshall points out on VentureBeat
If you tend to click often on an ad featuring a particular friend, that friend’s ranking rises within SocialMedia’s algorithm. Also, someone you don’t interact with at all won’t be part of your FriendRank. While your parents may be influential in your life, if they don’t interact with you much on Facebook, they won’t count for very much in SocialMedia’s algorithm.
No longer is social networks like Facebook where these social banner ads are being run a place for casual conversation and interaction. It has become yet another barnyard where we all mill around earning points while we pimp out products that make other people very rich. In one fell swoop the whole concept of friendship and conversation on these networks has been commoditized and cheapened.
As Alexander van Elsas points out in his post on this today
People join social networks for social networking reasons. They want to interact with friends. They want to play, have fun, get to know people. And when you are interacting with friends advertisement can easily get in the way of that interaction. While it may sound like fun that your best friend invites you to a movie on a Social Banner, it isn’t what you signed up for in the first place. That’s why Facebook got their backlash on Beacon, and that is a potential danger for any other type of social advertisement.
Advertising is not a social event and should never be considered as such. By suggesting that your friends on these networks running social ads are now worth something because of their ranking in the FriendRank system cheapens them and devalues any conversation and interaction you might have with them. This doesn’t even take into account the potential of spamming by people that you might have gained trust in because of your connections within the social network.
While I may not agree with Alexander that this is a dangerous experiment in social bannering I don’t agree that it is interesting. It’s just plain dangerous.
Conversation Tags: social media, social banner ads, social networks
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Anyway, that's my 2 cents. If it's too much of a rant feel free to delete.
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