Social Media News: December 2007

Friday, 14 December 2007

Is the Top 5 Viral Video Ads list accurate?

The Top 5 Viral Video Ads of 2007 was presented by the Financial Times on 11/12 and reproduced by many respectable blogs, websites, etc. But is it accurate? You will decide!

What is interesting about this Top 5 is the fact that when you check the supposedly #1 viral-video ad’s “view count” on YouTube, it shows that it was viewed around 1.2 million times!

The truth is that there are more than one videos of this viral ad distributed on YouTube and probably GoViral (the online marketing company whose data FT used on the article) added the numbers of all that videos. On a search at YouTube with all possible keywords I couldn’t find a single Cadbury viral video ad that attracted more than (or around) 5 million viewers. The one that FT used in its article (the one also shown on my previous post) was actually viewed less than 1.2 million times up until now.

Moreover, the Lynx viral ad that attracted 2.2 million viewers (and not 2.6 m as the article said) is not the one presented on the article. At #5 the Financial Times (and most of the blogs, websites, etc that reproduced this article) show one of Lynx’s viral ads (the one with the woman at the dentist) that actually attracted 760,000 viewers. The viral ad that they probably meant to include in their Top 5 (that really attracted 2.2 million viewers) is the one with the woman at the super market, shown below.

One last thing that one should keep in mind is that not only the view count of each viral ad makes a video successful. It’s also the comments left by the viewers, links to the video, the ratings, how many times it was favourited and how many honours it received. Especially the comments left by the viewers show some sort of engagement, don't you agree? Adding these into the equation, we get the following results:

Cadbury - Gorilla Drummer (just the one video that the FT article has a link to)
Views: 1.2 m
Comments: 1,907
Favourited: 6,472 times
Honours: 0
Links: 5
Ratings: 2,670 (4 stars)

Smirnoff – Green Tea Partay
Views: 3.4 m
Comments: 2,142
Favourited: 3,034 times
Honours: 2
Links: 5
Ratings: 7,305 (3 stars)

Ray Ban - Catch Sunglasses
Views: 3.2 m
Comments: 11,793
Favourited: 14,927 times
Honours: 3
Links: 5
Ratings: 13,654 (4 stars)

Blendtec - Will it Blend?
Views: 2.9 m
Comments: 9,421
Favourited: 6,736 times
Honours: 1
Links: 5
Ratings: 7,898 (4 stars)

Lynx/Axe – Bom chicka wah wah (the one that really attracted 2.2 m viewers)
Views: 2.2 m
Comments: 1,663
Favourited: 8,260 times
Honours: 6
Links: 5
Ratings: 2,036 (4 stars)

To tell you the truth I am not so sure that the Top 5 Viral-Video ads of 2007 as presented in FT’s article is the real Top 5. What do you think?

Thursday, 6 December 2007

Mark Zuckerberg’s apology over Beacon

Facebook founder apologised yesterday with a post on the social network’s blog about the controversial Beacon advertising system and for the way his company handled the situation. The good news for many Facebook users that have been protesting against the way Beacon worked is that they can now switch off Beacon altogether.

Last week, after thousands of complaints by Facebook users and activist groups regarding privacy issues, Facebook had to change how their social advertising system worked. On his post titled: “Thoughts on Beacon” Mr Zuckerberg states the following:

“About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web. We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it. While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I'd like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon.

When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn't get in people's way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared. We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn't on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.

But we missed the right balance. At first we tried to make it very lightweight so people wouldn't have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends. It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I'm not proud of the way we've handled this situation and I know we can do better.

Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don't want to use it.

This has been the philosophy behind our recent changes. Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we're releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here. If you select that you don't want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

On behalf of everyone working at Facebook, I want to thank you for your feedback on Beacon over the past several weeks and hope that this new privacy control addresses any remaining issues we've heard about from you.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Mark”

Tuesday, 4 December 2007

Online protests force Facebook to change how its controversial "Beacon" advertising technology works

More than 66,000 users sign a petition and demand to have more control over the stories that get published through Beacon to their Mini-Feed and potentially to their friends’ News Feeds.

Beacon is one of Facebook’s “business solutions” which can be used by any company to – as the famous social network claims on its “advertisers section” - “enable your customers to share the actions they take on your website with their Facebook friends”.

That means when Facebook users shop online, Beacon will tell their friends what they browsed or bought. Many companies have signed up to use Beacon on their websites including Blockbuster, Overstock.com and Fandango.com.

However, this new, promising to some, technology actually backfired as users and activist groups were concerned with the privacy issues that might be at risk. Moveon.org was actually at the first line of the protests against Beacon and the way it worked. Until Facebook agreed to change how it works, Beacon was an “opt-out” system and many users repetitively complained that they didn’t have the chance to “opt-out” and as a consequence had information about their purchasing whereabouts shared with their Facebook friends.

Since 20/11 more than 66,000 users joined a Facebook group called “Petition: Facebook, stop invading my privacy!” which has links to Moveon.org page where one can sign the online petition. The group’s description reads:

“Matt in New York already knows what his girlfriend got him for Christmas... Why? Because a new Facebook feature automatically shares books, movies, or gifts you buy online with everyone you know on Facebook. Without your consent, it pops up in your News Feed--a huge invasion of privacy.”

On 28/11, Paul Janzer, a Facebook customer support representative, responded to the users’ complaints with a post at the abovementioned group’s discussion board. Below you can read his full post:

“Thanks for your feedback about Facebook Beacon, it has definitely helped us make some changes to the product that we hope will provide you with a better experience on Facebook. Beacon was designed to help you share all the interesting things that you are doing outside of Facebook with your friends. Just like you have full control over your information on Facebook, you decide whether or not you want Beacon stories to be published and from which site.

Your feedback has made it clear that Beacon can be kind of confusing. To fix this, we are clarifying the way we inform you about a Beacon story before you decide whether or not you'd like to publish it on Facebook. We're also working on making the sites that offer Beacon more visible to you, both on Facebook and through visual cues, so you can determine which specific sites you can publish stories from. Also, we're providing more information on how Beacon works through a new tutorial and expanded help pages.

We're sorry if we spoiled some of your holiday gift-giving plans. We are really trying to provide you with new meaningful ways, like Beacon, to help you connect and share information with your friends. Thanks for taking the time to express your opinions about our products. Please keep the feedback coming as we continuously work to improve your Facebook experience.”

On 30/11 Facebook apparently changed how Beacon works and instead of someone opting-out, now he or she will have to “opt-in” in order to have the actions taken on a website that uses Beacon shared with their Facebook friends. Facebook also issued a special announcement regarding this change. Below you can read the changes Facebook did to Beacon:

"Facebook Update on Changes to Beacon"

"No stories will be published without users proactively consenting"

“We appreciate feedback from all Facebook users and made some changes to Beacon in the past day. Users now have more control over the stories that get published to their Mini-Feed and potentially to their friends’ News Feeds. Here’s how the Beacon changes work:

- Stories about actions users take on external websites will continue to be presented to users at the top of their News Feed the next time they return to Facebook. These stories will now always be expanded on their home page so they can see and read them clearly.

- Users must click on “OK” in a new initial notification on their Facebook home page before the first Beacon story is published to their friends from each participating site. We recognize that users need to clearly understand Beacon before they first have a story published, and we will continue to refine this approach to give users choice.

- If a user does nothing with the initial notification on Facebook, it will hide after some duration without a story being published. When a user takes a future action on a Beacon site, it will reappear and display all the potential stories along with the opportunity to click “OK” to publish or click “remove” to not publish.

- Users will have clear options in ongoing notifications to either delete or publish. No stories will be published if users navigate away from their home page. If they delay in making this decision, the notification will hide and they can make a decision at a later time.

- Clicking the “Help” link next to the story will take users to a full tutorial that explains exactly how Beacon works, with screenshots showing each step in the process.

These changes are in addition to those made earlier to improve the notifications on partner sites as follows:

- Users were sometimes moving away from a page before a notification could be fully displayed. We changed the process so that we confirm the full display of the notification before any information can be sent back to a user’s Facebook account.

- The notification appears more rapidly and is more clearly displayed.

There has been misinformation in the market about some key aspects of how Beacon works:

- Participation in Beacon is free for all partner sites.

- Beacon only allows for the sharing of specific actions on the specific sites participating in Beacon.

- Beacon only has the potential to display actions to a selection of a user’s friends through News Feed and on a user’s Mini-Feed.

- Facebook is not sharing user information with participating sites and never sells user information.

As with all its products, Facebook will continue to iterate quickly and listen to feedback from its users.”

It looks like for once online protests forced a major social networking site to change the way its advertising technology works. Would that be the beginning of a new era where users can actually have a say on how things work at the places they socialize? Since online advertising is gaining market share and online social networks is the new marketers’ battleground, only time will tell if new, online advertising technologies will be reasons for more protests from users that are truly concerned for their privacy.