Re:What you could do if you were Google and had their databases
by InclinedPlane on Friday March 16, 2012 @05:47PM
(#3715468)
Exactly. Advertising works least well when it's spam, slightly better when it's targeted, and best of all when it's a personal endorsement from someone you trust. When Alton Brown tells you to buy Shun knives or when Penny Arcade tells you to play SW:TOR that has a lot more impact than a random ad for wicker furniture or what-have-you.
That's something that google and facebook are working towards but perhaps they are working too indirectly.
Re:What you could do if you were Google and had their databases
by mindslight on Friday March 16, 2012 @07:11PM
(#3715743)
But the whole financial sell of Facebook is that they're purporting to work towards something better than targeted advertising. Due to increase in volume of communication between people, targeted advertising is going to be eclipsed by social recommendations. But Pinterest could never have been Facebook/Pin, because half of the second N in Metcalfe's law doesn't want to see dresses and shoes.
You've got Facebook raising money at over $50 per user based on the promise of futureperfect GMO (ie trying to imitate organic) targeted advertising. Google is so worried, they're gutting their core strength and namesake to become more 'social' by facilitating pop culture, as if it were hard to find. Clearly everyone on the web wishes they were buying things all the time, but just doesn't know it yet.
Meanwhile, Pinterest comes along and stumbles into creating a community where people curate pictures, many of stuff they desire to buy either now or in the future - inherently social status symbols. They skip ads, double-down on their ability to drive sales, and directly monetize affiliate links.
It seems like "Fail fast" has a corollary of "Context is king" - If you end up with all of the cat-picture-posting users in the world, and that's what users view your site as being for, you're never going to have better monetization than generic ads.