Seriously? Ads? • Hacker News Board

Re: Seriously? Ads?

#91

Post by TimJRobinson » Wed, May 30, 2012, 2:39 PM UTC

100% spot on, Facebook could see massive profits if it pulls off any or all of the following:

- Upon logging in Facebook lets me know my favourite band is playing in a few weeks, tickets are $25 and I can purchase with one click.

- A new episode of Dexter comes out, Facebook knows I love dexter and thus notifies me and allows me to watch instantly in my browser for just $1.

- A games company (steam, humblebundle, blizzard, whoever) is running a sale on games similar to ones I've already liked on Facebook, I can view and purchase the bundle through Facebook.

All of this is taken care of in one click by my credit card being linked up to Facebook, just like iTunes. They can basically combine the best bits of iTunes + Amazon + All the data they have on everyone on Facebook and build the ultimate relevant shopping directory completely personalized to me.

Sure there are sites that already cater for this but it's about the convenience and instant gratification. 50% of their users log into Facebook daily and won't even bother checking out other sites for these things if they're already right there in front of them available with one click.

They don't even have to do it themselves initially, just hook into Amazon / Ticketmaster / iTunes data and this shouldn't take too long to develop.

This is where the future is and if Facebook does this there's no reason they can't be the most profitable web company in the world.

Re: Seriously? Ads?

#92

Post by sharmanaetor » Wed, May 30, 2012, 2:39 PM UTC

You know you don't actually have to click an ad for FB to make money? Companies pay money just to get that ad in front so many eye balls!

Re: Seriously? Ads?

#93

Post by jiggy2011 » Wed, May 30, 2012, 2:40 PM UTC

truncate wrote: post #68

jiggy2011 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in a companies interest to make sure that there is a way to give them money, they are unlikely to want to throw away good customers just because they don't have a FB account. What I would expect to see however is discounts offered if you use FB payments and allow your purchases to be automatically shared with your friends.

allow your purchases to be automatically shared with your friends. This is one of the creepiest feature one can get. I already hate these social readers which automatically share what you read (I've stop reading stuff on FB because of that, even if many of them are of my interest). However I'm hoping they would provide some reasonable privacy options with that.

I don't imagine it would become compulsory. After all people need an avenue to buy their porno and health related products in privacy.

You would get something like "10% off for you and 5% off for all of your friends, if you allow us to repost on your wall"

The problem of course becomes spam, if FB ever gets to such a poor signal/noise ratio then people will simply stop using it.

Re: Seriously? Ads?

#94

Post by snowwrestler » Wed, May 30, 2012, 2:41 PM UTC

crag wrote: post #12

I've been on FB since the beginning. And I've never clicked on an ad. What makes you think I will to actually buy something? I barely trust Paypal, you think I'm gonna trust FB with my CC details. You gotta be kidding. There are a few steps FB must do before I'll trust them with anything other than bs about what games I'm playing now: 1. Convince me they take my security and privacy seriously. 2. Convince me they are…

I've never clicked on a Facebook ad either, but I've run ads on Facebook and they got clicked a lot. The cost per new user was lower than Google Adwords.

I'm not sure it's a good idea to dismiss Facebook's chances at making money from ads yet. I've never clicked on a TV ad either, but stations make hundreds of billions of dollars from those ads every year. That industry took many decades to grow to that point though.

Re: Seriously? Ads?

#95

Post by naitbit » Wed, May 30, 2012, 2:44 PM UTC

mtts wrote: post #71

jurre wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your parent was being sarcastic. We need a sarcasm tag in HTML.

I was aware of that. But parent did raise an interesting point. Google Wallet isn't doing too great. Why?

I cannot talk for everyone, but I use paypal instead of Google Wallet, because it allows me to pay without using credit card. I do think that current model of credit card payment is broken so I refuse to use it. Sure if dishonest merchant purges all my cash from credit card I could get it back by contacting bank, but money lost would be covered by all bank clients. I don't have much trust in paypal, but I can transfer to it appropriate amount of money from bank just before the payment, so possible damage is much lower. That said my level of trust with facebook is so low that I would probably refuse to put on their account even 100 USD.

Re: Seriously? Ads?

#96

Post by dpham » Wed, May 30, 2012, 2:44 PM UTC

I can't take this article seriously because it's so terribly written.

Re: Seriously? Ads?

#97

Post by sanxiyn » Wed, May 30, 2012, 2:46 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #79

Omnipresent wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to waste those 10 seconds which feel like eternity trying to fill all the fields. That's why amazons "1 click" checkout button is so successful. Make me, the user, do as less work as possible.

It's frustrating how the Google Toolbar solved this problem perfectly 10 years ago, then stopped working consistently. I should never have to type in a password, credit card number, or address if I don't want to... yet nobody except a few proprietary browser plugin vendors treats this as a problem worth solving.

People are working on it.

http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Autocomplete_Types

Re: Seriously? Ads?

#98

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, May 30, 2012, 2:47 PM UTC

>Fraud. Paypal and others use complex algorithms, special teams and God knows what. But Facebook has an unique and unparalleled data base of a user’s history, friends, activities and what not.

The author seems to confuse credit risk and fraud risk. Credit risk pertains to the probability of you being unable or unwilling to honour your commitments. Fraud, within this context, pertains to the unauthorised use of funds. Facebook's data may be a uniquely valuable to evaluating the former, but to fighting the latter it is less important than existing transaction history databases.

Financial fraud is an immensely complicated problem. An estimate quoted in The Economist recently put the fraud loss rate at approximately 0.35% of transactions and up to 1.8% for online payments [1]. Cross-border payments are a niche unto themselves - even with margins as high as 10%, the fraud risk still poses a high enough barrier to entry that even the banks handle just 5-10% of remittances [2].

It's 11AM and so far Visa and American Express already have 1-3 data points of swipe activity on me. Over the day they'll get 5-10 swipes apiece (+1 NYC). Facebook has a tremendous amount of value in its dataset, but think for a moment about how much Visa, Mastercard, American Express, or your primary bank know about where you live, what you spend on (and by virtue when and where you spend it), and, by aggregating that data, who you tend to spend with. That is what's valuable for anti-fraud and by proxy payments processing.

[1] http://www.economist.com/node/21554743

[2] http://www.economist.com/node/21554740

Re: Seriously? Ads?

#99

Post by olalonde » Wed, May 30, 2012, 2:47 PM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #21

Are online payments such a big unsolved problem? It takes me all of 10 seconds to type my CC number and associated security codes. Sites that I use a lot tend to allow subsequent purchases without re-entering them anyway. If everyone's facebook account has CC details attached and a 1 click "pay now" button you are only 1 XSS vulnerability from fraud on an unprecedented scale.

It takes me at least 5 minute just finding my cc.

Re: Seriously? Ads?

#100

Post by snowwrestler » Wed, May 30, 2012, 2:47 PM UTC

digitalsushi wrote: post #29

It would be very convenient for someone, somewhere, to establish a widely accepted micropayment system for the Internet. I sure can just whip out the CC, type in the 16 things, the special code, the expiration date, maybe a second screen the CC vendor presents to get my address or phone number for additional verification... But I would never bother for a 3 or 5 cent article. And I firmly believe that's why there is n…

Micropayments haven't taken off because people don't want to pay 3 to 5 cents for anything. The perception of value is so low that even a one-button form is too much friction in the user experience.

If your article is only worth 3 cents, just show it to me for free and put an ad on the page.