dessalles

Now that Facebook’s Beacon has had a couple months to lead its ad-partners’ ships into the unknown shoals of social advertising, it might be worthwhile to attempt better understanding why Zuckerberg’s once-a-century, “less commercial” ad program seems so ill-fated. To be clear, I don’t think Beacon’s underlying concept is inherently flawed. In fact, I’m fairly certain in the near-future we’ll see a more successful version of Beacon appear elsewhere - or maybe even on Facebook. But with that said, I don’t see any chance of Beacon’s current incarnation taking hold without some restructuring of Facebook’s mechanics. I’m not exactly breaking new ground with my forecast of Beacon’s impending failure, but all the explanations I’ve come across have been fairly shallow - citing an intrusiveness of advertising or breach of privacy. I think it’s important to realize that these are just the effects of Beacon’s poor implementation, not the causes. I believe cause to be something I’ve been referring to as the “signal vs. noise” problem in social networking. Lemme explain…

Based on the successes of its predecessors, Facebook crafted an information ecosystem in which it’s desirable to have as many friends as possible. Not surprising. When trying to build a social network, it certainly seems sensible to incentivize the primary form of investment users make in the network. However, the natural consequence of this dynamic is that the large majority of Facebook friendships exist at the edges of real-world social networks. That is most Facebook friendships are in fact just acquaintances. The introduction of the News Feed and Mini-Feed gave these edge relationships a daily presence. Here we see the first instance of the signal vs. noise issue. With each friendship given equal weight, the large majority of items populating the News Feed are generated by fringe friends. The News Feed’s “signal” is drowned out by “noise” broadcast from the edge. In theory, the excessive noise should have driven users to terminate some of these auxiliary relationships. But it didn’t. And if I had to wager, I’d bet it’s because users are already familiar with the day-to-day activity of their real friends, and it’s the fringe broadcasts that are actually equally valuable. The desire to carefully monitor the periphery of one’s social network shouldn’t come unexpected. It’s induced by the same voyeurism that was tapped to encourage amassing hundreds of friends in order to gain access to media hidden by Facebook’s privacy controls. I think it’s this balance of private information and public broadcasts that drove Facebook’s astounding growth. Enter Beacon.

So up to Beacon’s release, the “signal vs. noise” problem wasn’t actually an issue because it turned out the noise was actually signal and the signal was actually noise. Awesome. However, social ads are slightly different. One quick note: I’m always hesitant to refer to things like Beacon and Google’s AdSense as advertising. I think it’s important to make a distinction between sponsorship and advertising. If you remove the sponsorship from a sponsored search result you still have a search result. Similarly, remove the sponsorship from off-site activity broadcast to News Feeds via Beacon and you still have syndicated off-site activity. That is, instead of “Sam bought the new Radiohead album on Amazon” you’re left with “Sam bought the new Radiohead album”. And the later isn’t all that bad. On the other hand, remove the “sponsorship” from an advertisement and, well, the ad ceases to exist. Anyhow, one of the fundamental promises of Beacon is the increased relevance of the “advertising”. Relevance in social advertising is a matter of placing an ad in the appropriate social context. Here we see the return of the signal vs. noise problem. With the large majority of News Feed activity coming from the edges of a social network, the large majority of Beacon items cannot be placed in any meaningful social context. Because, in the real-world, Sam is just an acquaintance, his recent purchase of the new Radiohead album means nothing to me. And so that News Feed item isn’t interpreted as relevant, “less commercial” information but instead as intrusive advertising. Russel Davies acutely refers to this failure as the Uncanney Valley of Advertising - when a social ad lacks the social context to capture any real-world associations. This breakdown also applies to the flip-side of Beacon. Knowing the majority of Facebook friends are situated at the edges of real-world social networks, users are less likely to share increasingly personal information. Combined with Facebook’s initial opt-out policy and it’s on this side of Beacon we hear it labeled as an invasion of privacy.

So that’s it. In its current state, Facebook’s mechanics are fundamentally incompatible with Beacon. Edge relationships, which drive Facebook’s success, will generate exponentially more Beacon noise than Beacon signal. Throw in attention scarcity, the awkward social etiquette associated with “un-friending” and News Feeds already diluted by Facbook apps and we see that Zuckerberg has quite a bit or re-engineering on is hands if there’s any chance of Beacon taking hold. And with all that said, it’s always worth remembering that in our hyper-efficient information economy communication wants to be free; and Facebook is just a communications platform.