One of the oldest tricks in the book right? The used car salesman who raves about the quality and durability of their cars but when you bring the “pre-owned” vehicle home it turns into a lemon. The credit card company that offers a 0% APR on balance transfers only to tack on transfer fees that accrue interest at 24.99% and only get paid off after the transferred balance amount is paid. Or the cell phone companies that hook you with a great product and good coverage but lock you into a 2 year contract and then modify the fees associated with your plan. These are all shady and deceptive tactics used by major corporations to squeeze every last penny out of the consumer’s pocket. Is Facebook any different?

Facebook started as a small exclusive network for college students which became wildly successful. You couldn’t join unless you had a .edu email address. However, the capacity was finite and demographics narrow so Zuckerberg opens the gates to everyone. Users love the functionality and navigational ease of the site. You can share photos, poke friends, set your privacy settings, and more. There are some ads but they’re minimal and this network really seems to cater to the needs and interests of the users. However, Zuckerberg has a problem, and he’s wondering how to REALLY make some money with Facebook. The widgets thing is cool but not making much money. It does increase the site’s functionality a billion times over and Zuckerberg doesn’t have to do any development work, just approve or disapprove the widgets as they line up in the queue. He could sell the site but there’s much more potential than can currently be seen and he doesn’t want to risk losing control. Zuckerberg has larger plans. The personal data that all these happy Facebook users are voluntarily supplying has the ability to turn lead into gold but only if you have LARGE quantities of personal data. So the game plan is obvious, keep the ads to a minimum while continuing to promote and support the user’s privacy until the audience numbers significantly increase. Once the network is significant enough, sell the user data by signing up advertisers to piggyback ads into user content. As Zuckerberg states “They’re going to feel like content to a lot of people”. In other words, I’m going to take away your privacy and disguise ads as genuine content from your friends.

Is this just not another bait and switch tactic? Will Facebook users continue to supply personal data even though their messages and status updates will be commandeered by major corporate advertisements? Is Facebook’s greed going to turn turn-off its audience? I do believe that there will be quite a backlash but if there’s serious money to be made in the meantime, might as well screw your users and get it while it’s hot right Mark?

Related Articles:
Mashable: Next Stop For Facebook: World Domination
TechCrunch: The Facebook Ad Backlash Begins
GigaOm: Is Facebook Beacon a Privacy Nightmare?

Speakers
Liana Evans - Director Internet Marketing, KeyRelevance
Rand Fishkin - CEO & C0-Founder, SEOmoz

micro communities are vertical portals
people in micro communities are able to funnel their interests and network with people
so…what’s the point of going micro? The user count is relatively tiny.
it’s traffic vs relevance. You have a higher chance for a conversion
contributing on a regular basis will build brand recognition

How do we discover micro communities?
web search engines are the right way
search for terms that are related to your industry
another way to find good communities is through a social media discovery blog
there are usually a lot of lists out there that will help you to discover more micro communities

How do I determine if a community is right for my business?
look at membership numbers
use the Google operatives i.e. (condo rentals site:trulia.com) to find micro communities right for you
look for features that you can leverage

Micro communities mentioned:
Care2 - connects non-profits to other non-profits
WebMD - Medical community
LibraryThing - Let’s you share and review books
Yelp - Local reviews community, you can take control of your listing inside Yelp
Trulia - Real estate community, site is getting large, on the uptake
Peer Trainer - Fitness network, runners, bikers, climbers
Donor Choose - Find organizations to donate to
ThinkVitamin - Blog launcher
Minti - For parents
RealEstateVoices - real estate community
Deviant Art -Digital art community
Sports Shooter - Network for sports photographers
Threadless - Fashion Networking
Cork’d - Wine enthusiasts site
Imbee - Social networking for kids
Virb - creative community, video, music, art
Wayfaring - secondary tool for social media, shared maps
CouchSurfing - Put up your couch for rent or for people to crash at (um..what?)
WikiHow - How-to content, does really well with the SEs
Helium - Broader how-to, writers can contribute content
Etsy - handmade goods
Avvo - community for lawyers
Urbis - creative community
BakeSpace - Food blog, centered around baking
FoodCandy - Foodie network
Sphinn - search marketing community
TheStranger - Seattle newspaper community
Ebay - Auction shopping/selling community

Liana Evans is now speaking

Search marketers need to put a new spin on their strategies
Go to where you audience is
Looked all over to see where we could place our client. Where they would be accepted.
They first identified bloggers that they wanted to talk to to spread the word about their product.
They started small and then ramped-up in case of possibly receiving negative feedback
Kept a database of comments from bloggers
Gave a special offer to the community through bloggers. Worked well.
Followed Womma, word of mouth guidelines before proceeding
A blogger that was featured on MSN’s front page was talking about the product. This blew open the front doors for sales.
You have to take the good comments with the bad comments. You’ll get both.
98% of bloggers ended up trying the product
traffic incresed
SEO benefits
Boost in brand exposure

You need to factor SEO + PPC + Social media into your campaign equation

If I hear anything more about Facebook I just might jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. Of course my death may be updated on the Bridge’s Facebook profile, Twitter, and Pownce. Like with any bubble, the social networking craze has it’s phases and is in mid-stage. It started with Friendster, became a teenager with MySpace, and is now a college grad with Facebook. Everyone wants a piece of the action but no one knows if they should make a Facebook app, a networking site, or both and integrate the two. Now that we’ve reached a point in this vertical that’s becoming highly competitive, let’s go back to the tech history books to find out what entrepreneurs did during times likes this. We remember the buzz word ‘long tail’ right? Gross, I know, but what was the whole premise around long tail keyword phrases? That if we focused search marketing efforts on keyword phrases that were less competitive, less searched for, but had high conversion potential, that the aggregate results would lead to profits. Guess what? The same principal applies to social networks. Those who build highly targeted social networks will have the best chance at gaining the most.

Take the wedding networking site TheKnot.com for example. This network is specifically targeted towards couples who are “seeking information and services to help plan their weddings and their future lives together.” On TheKnot.com you can create your profile, invite your friends, post to your blog, etc. According to their site they receive 3.2 million visitors per month and 3,000 new members per day. Another example would be a site like Dogster where you can create a profile for your pooch and connect with other doggies that you think your dog would be friends with. The stats for Dogster? They have 302,974 dog profiles on there. 302,974 DOG profiles!

Since Facebook is the new social networking gorilla in the room, you’ll have to build a niche site in order to get to the bananas. Then you can build a Facebook app and advertise with the new Facebook ad-network Lookery or monetize your app with a text-link ad service from fbExchange.