Facebook Privacy Settings Not to be Overlooked
Back in December 2009, Facebook changed their default privacy settings for users, pretty much revealing someone’s entire profile: photos, information, contact information, friends, etc. to the universe, including major search engines. At the same time and throughout January, they announced the change on the site at the point of login, and users were given the option to change these defaults to protect their privacy. But, how many of us actually did it? Unless you log in to the site frequently, you might not have known about the changes for days, weeks, or months ( not that this would be an issue with Facebook marketers and affiliates who are hooked up to the site by IV…) and even frequent FBers are so used to seeing little banners and extra information that you might just ignore it.
Opening up Facebook in this way seems to be another wave in the current tide of making the web more transparent. Twitter’s power for marketers is based on it, and this change from FB is probably just a follow-suit move to cater to their advertisers, though how it will affect their total revenue remains to be seen.
Getting back to how this all affects us, the general Facebook community, Sarah Perez of The New York Times made some recommendations for protecting your privacy on Facebook, and here is her shortlist of the 3 most important profile items you should think about protecting:
1. Decide Who Can See The Things You Share (Status Updates, Photo, Videos, etc.)
If you accepted the new recommended settings then you voluntarily gave Facebook the right to share the information about the items you post with any user or application on the site. Depending on your search settings, you may have also given Facebook the right to share that information with search engines, too.
2. Decide Who Can See Your Personal Info
Facebook has a section of your profile called “personal info,” but it only includes your interests, activities, and favorites. Other arguably more personal information is not encompassed by the “personal info” setting on Facebook’s Privacy Settings page. That other information includes things like your birthday, your religious and political views, and your relationship status.
After last month’s privacy changes, Facebook set the new defaults for this other information to viewable by either “Everyone” (for family and relationships, aka relationship status) or to “Friends of Friends” (birthday, religious and political views). Depending on your own preferences, you can update each of these fields as you see fit. However, we would bet that many will want to set these to “Only Friends” as well.
3. What Google Can See – Keep Your Data Off the Search Engines
When you visit Facebook’s Search Settings page, a warning message pops up. Apparently, Facebook wants to clear the air about what info is being indexed by Google. The message reads:
“There have been misleading rumors recently about Facebook indexing all your information on Google. This is not true. Facebook created public search listings in 2007 to enable people to search for your name and see a link to your Facebook profile. They will still only see a basic set of information.”
While that may be true to a point, the second setting listed on this Search Settings page refers to exactly what you’re allowing Google to index. If the box next to “Allow” is checked, you’re giving search engines the ability to access and index any information you’ve marked as visible by “Everyone.” As you can see from the settings discussed above, if you had not made some changes to certain fields, you would be sharing quite a bit with the search engines…probably more information than you were comfortable with.
As an affiliate network with a significant portion of business in Facebook and Social Media, we strive to uphold the quality of affiliate activity in this area. Part of that quality is an ethical commitment to the users on behalf of our advertisers, and so we recommend that you take a few minutes to follow the steps outlined in this post to keep Facebook a happy place!
Virtual Currency – Media Types for Online Games Applications
Adsmarket’s media activity with online games has been growing rapidly for the
past year. This is due to two main reasons:
1. Great growth in this online field & user’s awareness.
2. A combined synergy between these applications & Affiliates/Publishers.
I wanted to share with you a fast-growing media channel that you MUST use or at
least try, for your upcoming campaign – Virtual Currency. (If you don’t know much
about virtual currency yet, I won’t go into it here, but two sites I like explain it really
well. Click here or here.)
A lot of online games providers (either developers or publishers) have been offering
their users Virtual Currency because it is a simple and user-friendly way to spend
money online as a part of the gaming experience. It is also a very targeted media
source, as many affiliates and publishers offer Virtual Currency to their users via
social media applications, MMO applications, portals, etc.
Many of my clients are resistant to opening their campaign to Virtual Currency, but
once they understand the potential for them the reservations become a thing of the
past.
No matter what kind of games you are promoting; Skill games, Casual Games,
MMO, MMORPG, virtual currency is a proven source of positive ROI.
You guys think I am just trying sell something? From Google:
“Virtual Worlds Forecast to Grow at 23% through 2015 – Micro transactions
expected to grow to $17.3 billion by 2015.”
“While virtual goods have been driving revenues in Asia and Europe for
years, 2009 will be remembered as the year virtual goods-based businesses began to
scale in the United States. Virtual goods may be bringing the largest disruption
entertainment, communication, and e-commerce infrastructure companies have seen
for a long time.”
Now, tell me you don’t want some of that money in your pocket…
This is the perfect opportunity to be open to change, modify your business model, and make
more money! I’ve learned time and time again how dynamic the online advertising industry is,
and it certainly pays to be flexible. If you are not open to that, stop reading now. Otherwise,
let’s get down to business.
So, how can virtual currency contribute to your online campaigns? The answer is very simple:
The right attitude and good campaign management, starting with knowing how to evaluate
your revenue stream. To calculate this you will simply need the data below (and a bit more)
- Current number of active & paying users.
- Average amount a user spends per country/application/game.
- Amount paid to acquire new users – in terms of media buying & the above.
- Conversion ratio from a registered user to a paying user. (as a unit of time)
- Average user lifetime.
This data will show you a general picture regarding the revenue you are producing from the
campaign.
Case Study:
You have 10,000 registered users on your site, out of which 10% are a becoming paying
users spending $1.00 per month (after an average of two months from the day they
registered). Average user lifetime here is about 6 months.
If the above is correct, once the campaign is live two months from now, this site will
be generating 10K per month (not including media selling and other services etc) and
possibly more. What are our expenses using traditional media sources such as
Banners, Paid Search, or Pop up/under? Costs can average around $1.00, if not
more.This is the point where added value of Virtual Currency kicks in: higher
volumes with potential to increase your revenue.
Bottom Line: Using Virtual Currency will provide you around 5%-3% in
terms of paying users – however, you will also pay half, if not less, per user. -
That’s an additional 3K-5K per month!
Look at your Facebook profile; how many kisses have you sent lately? How many
vegetables are you growing? When was your last big win playing Texas holdem?
Many of us are already a part of the virtual currency wave as participants. Look
what may happen to Zynga! we can only learn and make more money!
Uzi Arbiv is a Senior Sales Representative at Adsmarket, specializing in the Online Games vertical.
If you are an advertiser and would like more information, please contact him at uziATadsmarket.com.