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The second page of the article claims that asking for extended permissions on a Facebook application results in significant drop-off. The article doesn't cite any data, and this contradicts my impression that users blindly click through any and all dialog boxes. Wonder which is true.
> "There is absolutely no incentive to make sweepstakes social. Why would you invite more people to join a sweepstakes? It reduces your own chances."
Then increase a user's chances as they spread it? Let them send a link to their friends - if they click it they both get an extra entry to the contest. Similar to how LivingSocial recently pulled off the Amazon gift card deal.
> Uploading a photo or video is a big investment on the part of the user, and they do not expect to do it for the vast majority of businesses.
Then make it easy. MMS your picture to NNNNN or email it to picture@contest.tld
It's not that users don't want to upload pictures, but taking a picture, copying to your computer, and then uploading it with your browser is a convoluted pain in the ass. Reduce friction and people will bite - especially when there's something in it for them (be the sexiest Facebook American Apparel model and win! get your friends to vote for your picture!)
By the same token, most FB marketing isn't working as intended because the marketers don't grok the point of FB. You can't just stick content on FB and then build social elements around it. You have to have a compellingly social experience that then gets skinned with branding and possible sell-through options. Social must come first.
This is a frustrating notion for classically trained marketers, because to a classically trained marketer, the strategy must always preceed the tactic. The strategy -- driving people to the product/brand, benefits and identity of the brand, etc. -- usually gives rise to the tactics.
On Facebook, however, that's just not how users engage with one another. No one's there to look for Pepsi. They're there to look for each other. Pepsi, in this hypothetical example, would be much better served with a really cool feature or social utility that is lightly skinned with Pepsi branding than it would be with a really pretty, expensive, heavily branded experience that just sits on FB waiting to be discovered. That's not to say that Pepsi can't have its cake and eat it, too. The holy grail, obviously, is a compelling social utility that is uniquely Pepsi's and works especially well for Pepsi the way it couldn't for Coke (or for Bank of America, or Geico, or Nike, or P&G, or whoever). But in getting to that holy grail, build for social first. Then build for your brand.