wtf8?! Facebook Likes You (It Really, Really Likes You)

At Facebook's F8 Developer Conference yesterday, it seems like they buried the lede.

Several announcements were made at the conference and some anticipated changes went live on the 400-million-strong social network.

Like Goes Live
Initially seen as semantics, changing "Become a Fan" to "Like" is designed to make it easier for Facebook users to participate on the network. Facebook notes users like twice as often as they fan on any given day. This also translates into more acquisitions for brands. But there are other, more significant, changes afoot that everyone needs to fully understand.

Facebook Plugins Enable Social Distribution
A set of plugins were unveiled to make it easier to integrate Facebook features with other websites. They include a “Like” functionality, Activity Feed and Recommendation widget that bring friends, social activity and relevant interactions to any site. Brands can enhance the level of engagement on their websites, offering a more personalized experience. Levi's and CNN are already using some of the plugins. Users are expected to increase their time spent on brand sites based on potential interaction with their Facebook friends. 

Levi's Social Shopping
Levi's home page feel's like a Facebook co-branded microsite. According to Levi's, it integrates "the 'Like' functionality on its e-commerce site. In addition, Levi’s is building a Friend Store in which consumers who are logged into Facebook can see a list of their friends’ favorite Levi’s products and seamlessly shop with their friends." 

CNN's Use of Instant Personalization WILL Cause Privacy Concerns
Anyone checking into CNN via their Facebook account can see what stories their friends are recommending and sharing. Users that do not want their friends to know their CNN consumption habits will take issue with this. It's done by default and it shares your information with third party sites. However users can edit their settings.

Microsoft Leaps into the Cloud
Microsoft announced the most unexpected news with the launch of Docs.com. The site allows Facebook users to create, edit, and share Microsoft Office documents with Facebook friends.  Will user expectations be met? The expectations of a paid Microsoft Office experience vs. a free Google Docs experience are quite different. It will be interesting to experience what's launched.

The Mountain Comes to Mohammed
The f8 news allows Facebook to compete with Google while becoming truly social. Facebook will face some issues with its users. But this is nothing new and something they've ultimately navigated in the past.

The plugins will embed the social network more thoroughly across the web and more seamlessly connect content, people and brands. The distributed model eliminates the concerns of many brands and their agencies -- from giving up too much control and morphing to the constraints of Facebook tabs to making the issue of commerce on Facebook somewhat moot. The mountain seems to be coming to Mohammed. The only question? Is Facebook the mountain or Mohammed? Stay tuned. 

  

Cross-posted to my work blog, Social Study.

Comments

[David E. Bowman]

Remember the Seinfeld where George's worlds collide? That episode gets more relevant every day, while the concept it was based on is dying fast. Facebook is pushing the tensions between public and private, business and personal, and privacy and convenience to the point where they basically own you. Google is really no different. (see Chris Brogan's latest blog post) The question will be do we mind if one of these companies owns so much information about us. To date the answer is no, we don't really mind as long as Farmville is up and running, quizzes are working, email is functional, pictures are sharable, and many of our old friends can remind us why we have not made the effort to hang out with them.

Don't get me wrong, I am an avid user of both Facebook and Google. They have enriched my life in many ways. They, along with a handful of other sites, represent most of what I do on the web every day. Still, we are just beginning to explore this territory. It will be fascinating to see opportunities emerge for new platforms and concepts as the move toward complete integration on the part of the major players moves forward. Combine this with marketing dollars from major brands and you begin to get something that is really impressive or frightening depending on your viewpoint.

Every day it seems I have more and more people asking how to get involved in Facebook, and an equal number asking me if they should abandon it entirely. Will the "social grid" evolve into something these companies control, or will it prove as elusive as the holy grail?

What Facebook wants and what its users want may prove to be very different. I am not smart enough to know what the future will hold, but I do know that it will be interesting.

Great post Kevin!

[Michael Rubin]

"Facebook buried the lede" is a true understatment. So much of what was announced yesterday is going to have an impact on the way we interact on the Web for a long time to come.
One item in particular that raised my eyebrows was the auto-update of your profile.

Here is how it works:

1> Suppose you go to a website that has the "Like" functionality turned on. Let's use the IMDB page for "It's a Wonderful Life" as an example.

2> You click on the "Like" button. The IMDB page now says "Michael E. Rubin and 10 others like this."

3> At the same time, my Wall on Facebook is now updated: "Michael likes It's a Wonderful Life (1946) on IMDb."

4> And at the same time as that, the Likes and Interests section of my profile is also updated to show that "It's a Wonderful Life" is a movie I like.

Why is this a Big Deal?
Let's be honest. Most people only update their Profiles with their Likes and Interests at the time they joined Facebook. After that, it's neglected and often forgotten. Marketers use that data (in part) to serve ads that are relevant and targeted to you. If it's not updated, you're going to see irrelevant ads. For marketers, that's money spent poorly.

Think about it. Now your Profile -- and all of its relevant Likes, Interests, and demographic data -- will now update itself automagically every time you "Like" something on the Web. That means marketers will have fresher, more relevant data to use when targeting consumers. And it all happens behind the scenes without the consumer having to do anything more than simply click "Like."

Cue the swell of the orchestral soundtrack

Ed Dale goes into more (admittedly histrionic) detail here:
http://www.eddale.co/general/facebook-bombshell-how-did-everyone-miss-this-facebook-f8?success

Disclosure: I work with Kevin at Empower. This is my opinion.

[Kevin Dugan]

Thanks for jumping in David and Michael. Great points.

On the data. Clearly the larger story here is that it's an ad move. Facebook is fine-tuning and already effective ad model. Perhaps fine-tuning is an under statement.

And on the private, personal factor...I counsel people on this all the time. People try and craft sites on the web that know one or the other persona...LinkedIn vs. MySpace perhaps as an example. But even if you are anal retentive about your privacy settings, there's nothing stopping someone from one of those sites...someone who you interact with...from taking a screen shot and distributing it to a larger audience.

Both of your comments reinforce yet another social media paradox. It's all about sharing, and being genuine and transparent. Yet the very things you're doing could be used out of context by third party sites. This is a HUGE privacy issue...one that Google more than stepped in with the launch of Buzz.

Pete Blackshaw's latest Ad Age article is even more relevant as a result:
http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=143388

[David E. Bowman]

I was just checking out the integration with Pandora. Fascinating. I can see what my facebook friends, who also use Pandora, are listening to and listing as their favorite songs. Not just that, as songs play on my Pandora station, it now shows my facebook friends facebook profile picture along with their name informing me that they are a fan of a particular song or band. This adds a whole new dimension to the experience of Pandora, and generates all kinds of meaningful data for facebook and its advertising clients.

[Brewatalk]

It was an interesting read, I am a team member of Brewatalk. Brewatalk is a social networking site meant for avid bloggers like you for whom mere 140 characters are not enough to speak their mind. The Brewatalk team would be obliged if you could visit the site and give an honest opinion about it. Your opinion would be highly regarded. Hope to see you at www.brewatalk.com.

[Trent Callier]

Kevin, your post wtf8?! Facebook Likes You (It Really, Really Likes You) was very entertaining, but also informative. I found this informative because it showed me why facebook constantly changes things around on their website. When you said that the reason facebook changed the become a fan to like something was because twice as many people like things than become a fan showed me that the reason facebook constantly changes the site is because facebook looks at what the users like to do most on the site, and then change the site to highlight those things because facebook thinks the majority of the people will be happy with the change.

Thank You
Trent Callier

[Eileyah Zen Jenkins]

the popularity of facebook has come from it's integration property..like other websites and social profile sites can connect to it..it's always been the power of integration and collaboration..

[Gigi]

Just when you felt the equilibrium between private and public had been reached, the boundaries are pushed once again. However, (depending on which way you look at it) Facebook has not tipped the scales in any particular direction, merely increased the social possibilities for both the private and public users. How each one feels about the other is a different story.

Although it slightly unnerves me that hundreds, possibly thousands/ millions, of people have access to my information I have to admit I find it rather flattering. We are no longer being regarded as ‘the little man’, but rather international critics. Our opinions matter.

[Kevin Dugan]

As a marketer, it's easy for me to see the benefits. And I also appreciate how Facebook and similar sites make it easy for you to participate and have "ambient awareness" of your friends.

What disturbs me is how difficult it is to make users aware of how it all works, making it easier for them to decide if the control or lack thereof bothers them.

How much detail can Facebook give users before they glaze over? But how pissed are people getting when they come to CNN and can see the stories their friends are sharing with other people? Out of context it catches them off guard.

[Meredith]

I completely agree with everything in this article. As a student, I can realize the data that this information can provide for marketers is important. At the same time, I am not yet educated enough in the tactics to understand how it works and exactly how out in the open my information will be.

It's a little scary to think that just simply "liking" something on a random site I visit can be viewed by not only friends and family on Facebook, but marketers, researchers, advertisers and other practitioners.

I understand that I can ignore the "like" option altogether if I want to keep my privacy, but at the same time it would be nice to understand my options.

[Kevin Dugan]

Meredith: Thanks for stopping by and weighing in on this. I think it's getting to the point where it's up to the users to immediately wonder how social media platform changes, enhancements, etc impact our privacy. It requires a lot of checking and re-checking of our profile settings.

[Nayna Desai]

Actually am really looking forward to seeing what happens with MS Docs :) Thanks for a great post!

[Collett]

Nice post. I think it is necessary to get the word out to the general Facebook community about the new instant personalization and privacy settings. Some people don't want their information from Facebook pulled to use on other websites, and most people don't know how to opt out of the settings. People need to understand that there is a possibility to opt out, but it is not the default setting. I don't appreciate how Facebook makes the setting difficult to change. Everyone needs to understand what is going on and thanks to blogs like this, it is possible to spread the word. Thanks!

[Michelle Child]

Reading this post after completing the website analyzing assignment for lightofchance.org was very interesting. Although they didn't have much interaction on their website, you could 'like' their Facebook page through their main page, which apparently is a pretty new function. I applaud lightofchance for that one!

Changing 'Become a Fan' to 'Like' was a smart move from Facebook. As mentioned, the small change in semantics has a big effect on consumers' decisions: 'becoming a fan' seems like a much larger commitment than simply 'liking' a company or event. The increase in 'likings' will reach far more consumers through news feeds.

The more plug-ins Facebook makes available for its businesses, the longer consumers will spend on Facebook. More and more companies are using these plug-ins, and with more and more being created, it seems no matter where you are online you will be just a click away from Facebook. This only increases the importance for businesses to constantly be up to date with Facebook's latest changes and additions. CNN and Levi's sites are the early adopters' of this trend and just two examples of the millions that will follow.

I'm interested to see this docs.com from Microsoft. However, if this is a paid service, it will be a while before this gains the public's full attention. It does seem easier than google docs in the sense that you can share information via Facebook instead of email, making it much quicker.

I'm still amazed every day at the attention and importance that companies place on Facebook. My generation has made the switch from myspace to facebook while both were simply 'social' networking sites (having little to nothing to do with businesses). Following that was the addition of business pages to Facebook, then more social networking sites such as twitter, linkedin, etc. Now, it seems like every website has a way to interact with their brand via Facebook. Will this every reach its peak interaction level, where consumers become tired of the social network's domination of the Internet?