“The newsfeed is probably one of the finest features in Facebook - it’s a centralized data feed system . . . The facebook team, as far as I’m concerned, are doing a great job marketing that advertising space and maintaining the value of it while preserving the quality of user-experience.”

As you guys all know, I am a major Facebook fan. They have the best interface. They have APIs, which sets the platform for them to become the new hub for online social communities. Their web pages are designed intricately using AJAX and Javascript in order to reduce the amount of pageviews, save bandwidth, and make the site faster for users.

OK, I’ll stop my prases for Facebook. Today I want to talk to you guys about the value of the advertising space that Facebook offers - especially in the Newsfeed section, which is the first thing you see at the homepage of Facebook (once you’re logged in, of course - otherwise you’ll see nothing much).

The newsfeed is probably one of the finest features in Facebook - it’s a centralized data feed system that organizes, summarizes the important activities that your friends did throughout the last little while. It shows you who was added as new friends (which makes it so much more viral - you can easily spot old highschool friends coming onto facebook through other friends, and you re-connect. It’s so nice to hear from old friends again!), and it shows your friend’s activities in groups, their notes, etc.

Basically, this is perhaps one of the juiciest areas of Facebook - this is where you see what the hell is going on to yourfriends and to yourself, who’s new, what’s hot, etc.

Take a look at this :

This is such a high-profile, attention-catching, visibility-guaranteed ad spot in my opinion!

Everytime Facebook slips one of those in, I look at it and read the details because I’m just programmed to do so. And the best part is, Facebook NEVER abuses it. I’ve NEVER seen more than 1 ad on the whole news feed, if not NONE. If ads start getting saturated in these type of spots, it loses the value, and annoys the members. The facebook team, as far as I’m concerned, are doing a great job marketing that advertising space and maintaining the value of it while preserving the quality of user-experience.

I’d like to give this a thumbs-up as a top-notch marketing tactic. Although, since I already tried a Mac and then returned it, this advertisement didn’t move me at all. Oh, and if you were just about to leave me a nasty comment telling me I shouldn’t have ditched the Macbook Pro because they are so much better and I have no patience to learn a Mac which is a superior system etc., please read this post about iFags first, and review your ideas and actions before you do so.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 7:09 am and is filed under Cool Websites, Marketing and Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.