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How Eduardo Saverin Sold Facebook Ads in 2004

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Re: How Eduardo Saverin Sold Facebook Ads in 2004

#21

Post by sadlyNess »

remi wrote: post #15
csallen wrote: post #14

Does anyone remember the icons you could buy for your friends' birthdays on Facebook? These came quite a bit later than 2004... I would guess ~2006. At first all of my friends balked at the idea of spending $1 on a gif. But it wasn't too long before I started seeing a couple of these appear on people's walls every time they had a birthday. Given the sheer number of people on Facebook, I assumed this would eventually…

Trivia: these icons were designed by Susan Kare ( http://www.kare.com/portfolio/01_facebook1.html ) who also designed some of the most famous Macintosh icons ( http://www.kare.com/portfolio/03_apple_macicons.html ).

And the Firefox icon too. *http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/the-icon-handbook

Re: How Eduardo Saverin Sold Facebook Ads in 2004

#22

Post by polyfractal »

demione wrote: post #18
dlokshin wrote: post #11

In the very beginning (2004 when I was a freshman), I remember being able to buy ads myself, for something like $10 for 1,000 views. This was really, really popular. People would advertise all sorts of things like parties, furniture, etc. A really popular advertisement was for roommates to pitch in and buy 10,000 views of "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EMILY! WE LOVE YOU!" and a picture of the blocking group to the left. These adv…

What a novel concept: users actually wanting to create and see ads because they are so incredibly targeted and relevant. I wonder at what point facebook lost their grasp around such a tightly coupled ecosystem.

Probably because the amount of money to be made from college seniors advertising parties is a microscopic fraction compared to the amount of money that Nike is willing to pay to reach those same college students.

Re: How Eduardo Saverin Sold Facebook Ads in 2004

#23

Post by timdorr »

demione wrote: post #18
dlokshin wrote: post #11

In the very beginning (2004 when I was a freshman), I remember being able to buy ads myself, for something like $10 for 1,000 views. This was really, really popular. People would advertise all sorts of things like parties, furniture, etc. A really popular advertisement was for roommates to pitch in and buy 10,000 views of "HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EMILY! WE LOVE YOU!" and a picture of the blocking group to the left. These adv…

What a novel concept: users actually wanting to create and see ads because they are so incredibly targeted and relevant. I wonder at what point facebook lost their grasp around such a tightly coupled ecosystem.

When they got rid of Networks. As they moved outside of schools, the natural grouping of everyone in the system around your college (and later by company) was lost. The Groups feature never really re-captured this kind of dynamic because the new groups are inherently smaller and not forced.

Another big factor was the introduction of the news feed. Now people are doing the same thing as ads (though, on a smaller scale) by posting updates and having them read through the news feeds of their friends. The old 2004 ads were the only way to communicate between users without posting on their wall.

Re: How Eduardo Saverin Sold Facebook Ads in 2004

#24

Post by phogster »

PakG1 wrote: post #10
grzaks wrote: post #7

He didn't manage to get a single advertiser right?

I don't think that's plausible, he would have to had at least a few small ones. And if I recall my memory of reading Facebook Effect and Accidental Billionaires, both books say that he was able to get something, though nothing big. But more importantly, does that matter? There are tons of great projects here on HN that are never able to get any customers. Does that make their work any less impressive? Let's judge the…

Well the work being judged here is the marketing effort, not the engineering work.

Re: How Eduardo Saverin Sold Facebook Ads in 2004

#26

Post by MichaelJW »

csallen wrote: post #14

Does anyone remember the icons you could buy for your friends' birthdays on Facebook? These came quite a bit later than 2004... I would guess ~2006. At first all of my friends balked at the idea of spending $1 on a gif. But it wasn't too long before I started seeing a couple of these appear on people's walls every time they had a birthday. Given the sheer number of people on Facebook, I assumed this would eventually…

https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=405727117130

"Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts, but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts."

"We'll be able to focus more on improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, games, comments, the "Like" button and the Wall."

Re: How Eduardo Saverin Sold Facebook Ads in 2004

#27

Post by csallen »

MichaelJW wrote: post #26
csallen wrote: post #14

Does anyone remember the icons you could buy for your friends' birthdays on Facebook? These came quite a bit later than 2004... I would guess ~2006. At first all of my friends balked at the idea of spending $1 on a gif. But it wasn't too long before I started seeing a couple of these appear on people's walls every time they had a birthday. Given the sheer number of people on Facebook, I assumed this would eventually…

https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=405727117130 "Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts, but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts." "We'll be able to focus more on improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, games, comments, the "Like"…

That blog post strikes me as a little fishy. I'm not privy to the internals of FB's engineering structure circa 2007, but I doubt a few engineers working on gifts (which even then likely brought in $millions/year) seriously detracted from development elsewhere.

Given the date, I think it's more likely that gifts were removed to help support the growing FB Platform rather than competing with its apps. (In 2007 people had profiles that looked like this: http://yflcsandi.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/facebook-profil...) Either that, or something along the lines of focusing less on revenue-generating activities.

That said, I believe it's better to nurture traditions early, especially if those traditions involve payment. It's also rare for a company to generate significant amounts of revenue from multiple channels, so I'm not sure it was a wise decision to just kill off the Gift Shop.

Re: How Eduardo Saverin Sold Facebook Ads in 2004

#29

Post by JonnieCache »

ATYT wrote: post #16
throwaway54-762 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it sounds creepy.

Depends on just how cocky/good-looking the "creep" is.

Nope. It's still weird, even if the creepee likes it.

Go there and talk to them. Why did you move to a campus?

Re: How Eduardo Saverin Sold Facebook Ads in 2004

#30

Post by conradfr »

csallen wrote: post #14

Does anyone remember the icons you could buy for your friends' birthdays on Facebook? These came quite a bit later than 2004... I would guess ~2006. At first all of my friends balked at the idea of spending $1 on a gif. But it wasn't too long before I started seeing a couple of these appear on people's walls every time they had a birthday. Given the sheer number of people on Facebook, I assumed this would eventually…

I was wondering the same thing recently, recalling "offering" a (free) panda to a girl friend of mine around 2008.

It was simpler Facebook times :)

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