Facebook made a range of announcements today, but the one that struck me is “Beacon”. Zuckerberg explains, quoted from TechCrunch:
Social distribution, now here is where it gets interesting. When somebody engages with your (the advertiser’s) page, that is spread virally through the network. When someone says they are a fan of your brand, that becomes a trusted referral. It goes right to their Mini feed. A strong trusted referral for your brand.
One of the issues with “Facebook friends” is that the majority are not really friends from whom a referral means anything, but a group of superficial acquaintances from whom a referral means almost as much as random review on epinions.com. I’m lucky - the vast majority of my friends (at a paltry 47) are people I trust and from whom I would probably consider a recommendation or opinion. I wonder about those with 1000 friends. Does a recommendation mean anything? Especially if 1000 people are recommending 200 different items in the same category. Who do I believe? Why would I care to sift through all this information and try to make an informed decision?
I’m thinking that this will end up like the groups: a way to align yourself with a brand, but the identification with the company (as it is with many groups) is more to brand yourself than to engage with like-minded people.
Hmmm… creating not corporate pages, but promotion pages. That would be interesting. If I saw that “Dave Walker entered the iCoke.com Untimate Nintendo Wii Contest”, that might get me interested.
I can’t wait to see how this will work, and how companies will use this, good and bad.