Facebook latest stock quote – [[FB]]

I’m doing more and more Facebook ad campaigns for our clients. Got 4 things to say about Facebook:

• RELATIONSHIPS: The way I personally use Facebook has evolved from interacting with friends to mostly tracking the brands I like. I believe Facebook can be detrimental to real-life relationships, because it tends to make everyone lazy and gives an illusion of being involved in your friends’ lives when you track their updates or look at recent pictures. I prefer face-to-face communication, even if it’s not as frequent. Quality over quantity, basically. I don’t think I’m alone in this conversion to a more commercial bend, and that’s good news for both Facebook as a company and brands seeking exposure.
• ADVERTISING COST: based on my experience with various sectors, you can budget $2 to $3.50 per page like. Which is actually reasonable. For $500 you can gain 200-250 new fans.
• PRIVACY: Huge concerns there. Similar to Twitter, whenever you upload a picture to the site, you grant Facebook unlimited rights to the picture. What that means in real terms is this: they can – and more importantly, they DO – take your picture, sell it to a company, and not give you a penny. Unethical and outrageous, especially when you consider creepy stories like this one. (In short, photo of a girl who committed suicide due to having been gang-raped, was sold by Facebook for promotional use to a dating website!) I deleted all but one of my pictures from Facebook.
• PRIVACY 2: When setting up an ad on Facebook, you have an option to really segment your audience. For example, there was an option to select people “buying a house in the next 6 months”. How the hell does Facebook know something like that? They must have some advanced algorithm analyzing conversations, in addition to tracking your every move on the web. I always make sure I’m logged out when browsing the web. Sneaky bastards.