Facebook creates an artificial distinction between labeled ads (which are, of course, obvious ads) and posts with paid reach (which are also ads, but presented as normal content), exactly for the purpose of maximizing the quantity of ads while minimizing the impression of content being dominated by ads.
My point is that FB seems much, much more focused on creating an engaging user experience than it does on ads, so it seems wrong to say that their deep learning efforts have ads as their one main goal.
Right, but the issue was the claim that with FB everything is about ads, not the UX feels like it is about ads. Making ads not feel like as much of the FB experience as they are is, itself, about ads -- and, particularly, is about maximizing the degree to which the FB experience is actually about ads.
Well, we just disagree here. I see it from exactly the other end. That the main FB goal is to engage users, and minimizing the (necessary, but grudgingly so) ads is about that.
FB's bait is user engagement. So, applying machine learning to the goal of engaging users makes sense.
But, to monetize that user-engagement they, of course, use ads. Applying machine learning directly there makes sense too.
Beyond that, it's just semantics. Yes, one could accurately say that everything FB does is about ads because, ultimately, they are a for-profit company which derives its revenue from advertising. In that way, the ultimate goal of all of its activity is aimed at generating ad revenue.
But, that doesn't mean that every single activity or bit of technology that supports that activity is directly tied to driving ad revenue. That is to say, that if FB featured no advertising but, instead, charged users, they would still likely deploy machine-learning to user-engagement and, thus, customer-retention.
That is, is the main goal of Facebook to engage and connect people via its platform, or is it to make money from selling ads?
From everything I've seen from them thus far, I just don't believe ad revenue is their main goal. They do seem incredibly obsessive about engagement, but ads seem like a neglected afterthought.
Shaping the feed is certainly one part of it. But I guess that part of the success of FB is that they don't make it, as you said, not make the ads feel as much part of the experience.
Is this actually true, or a glib answer? Ads certainly don't feel like much of the FB experience, nowhere near the level of Google, or even Twitter. They're negligible, really.
Whereas shaping the feed and identifying people in pics, etc, is central to the FB experience.