Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam

Re:Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam by cookiecaper on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @07:06AM (#2115479)

I really liked this quote: "Between the incredible growth of casual games that arguably do little for the collective human experience but consume a growing amount of it each day... it's hard sometimes to take Facebook seriously when it says it wants to bring people together and make the world a better place."

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Re:Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam by w1ntermute on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @08:48AM (#2115734)

> casual games that arguably do little for the collective human experience but consume a growing amount of it each day

Who's to say that whatever people were doing with that time before was doing something significant "for the collective human experience"?

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Re:Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam by alex_c on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @11:22AM (#2116303)

Facebook games (and MMOs in general, for the most part) are designed tightly around a feedback loop meant to make the game as addictive as possible. It strongly reminds me of experiments where rats are given a choice between eating and receiving a shock of pleasure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure_center#Experiments_on_...

The worst part of these games is that they can act as a surrogate for success: your life may not be progressing in any way whatsoever, you may have goals and aspirations that you are not pursuing, but you are getting rewards and constantly progressing in a game - I'm not sure how good our brain is at distinguishing between real and virtual rewards (especially when the virtual rewards are guaranteed, but the real rewards are... well... hard).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system

All this is to say: other potential time wasters (TV is probably the most common) may be less likely to cause addictive and/or harmful behavior (I can't believe I'm arguing that TV may be less harmful than video games, but there it is). Sure, the majority of people can play causal games strictly in their downtime, but for some it spills over into what may otherwise be productive time, and for a relative few it can take over (where do you think Zynga's revenue is really coming from?)

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Re:Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam by simonsarris on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @02:34PM (#2117028)

There was an article on this I read a year ago called Awesome By Proxy: Addicted to Fake Achievement

http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/awesome-by-proxy-addicte...

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Re:Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam by alex_c on Wednesday January 19, 2011 @12:47PM (#2120576)

Thanks for that link - excellent article.

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Re:Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam by quanticle on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @09:33AM (#2115902)

Agreed. I mean, if people take the time that they would have spent playing Solitaire and Minesweeper and use it to play Farmville instead, is that really such a waste?

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Re:Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam by larrik on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @09:13AM (#2115821)

I don't know why you were downvoted. I believe you are making a valid point. The internet didn't invent wasting time, it just is better at convincing you that you aren't.

Most "normal" people waste the majority of their leisure hours, depending on your definition of waste. The audience here, however, is not typical.

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Re:Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam by ohyes on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @11:02AM (#2116201)

This audience is not atypical with regard to time wasting. (It is typical).

I'm 'wasting' time right now skimming this article, reading this thread, posting a response about how i'm wasting time right now.

The difference is that I think it is interesting to read about failing software startups with billions of dollars invested in them. So it is atypical with regard to subject matter. I have no interest in american idol or tom cruise or Oprah or glen beck.

I also find that I am most productive at programming when I approach it as a fun game that I am 'wasting time' at.

(apologies for going meta).

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Re:Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam by aj700 on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @09:09AM (#2115811)

But as Zuck didn't say to Eduardo: "they might get laid."

http://www.allfacebook.com/11-have-had-sex-with-someone-they...

It happens. If it gets you laid, it sure is making the world a better place.

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Re:Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam by revorad on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @07:56AM (#2115590)

It sounds very poignant but the real question is what proportion of time spent on Facebook is just playing casual games? If most people are still spending their time posting photos, messaging, commenting, then Facebook does create a lot of value.

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Re:Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam by stcredzero on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @09:51AM (#2115956)

With new technologies and their implementations, you see all sorts of new opportunities for connecting people with value and making money. Along with this come the scammers, spammers, and idle wastes of time. It's nothing new, just even faster and more pervasive.

Also, it's sometimes hard to distinguish something new and valuable from an idle waste of time. As my dad says, you never know which cloud is going to give you rain.

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