Spam 2.0
No one likes email spam right? You only give your email address to family, close friends, and institutions you conduct business with. Yet no matter how great your spam filter is, the junk mail still gets through. The people sending it may call it advertising or direct marketing, but to us it’s just a nuisance we can never seem to fully cleanse ourselves of. It’s one thing to opt in or subscribe to something you might actually be interested in (otherwise known as "bacn", but pronounced bacon), and another to get the totally unsolicited, unrelated junk we affectionately call spam. Luckily we have filters to deal with a good percentage of it.
However, today spam has become more sophisticated. It’s made an evolutionary leap into the popular social networks we use daily; Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and the list keeps growing. We used to be able to opt in by liking a brand page, or following our favorite companies. While we can still do that, now we are inundated with ads for brands we didn’t like or follow. They are called “sponsored” posts, and they pollute our timelines and news feeds like garbage in a river. Unlike email though, where your internet service or email provider fights hard to keep spam out of your emails, it’s the social networks serving up the spam.
It’s the Business Model! Duh!!
Why would they shove all this spam down our throats, while taking the risk of annoying and alienating their users? The obvious short answer is money, and not having any other options to keep the lights on. Those massive data collecting servers don’t pay for themselves. Employees don’t volunteer at the social networks. They have bills too. Stuff needs to get paid for. I get it.
But it’s old media thinking. In television, you suffer through 2-3 minutes worth of ads during your favorite shows. In publishing, sometimes the ads are bigger than the news stories, or take up more pages than actual content in the magazines. Now, while you’re catching up with your friends’ and families’ lives, there are ads in between that look so much like a genuine post, you are tempted to click. It makes you pause and double-take to be sure, but sometimes you do click. Add up a few million accidental clicks, and a light bulb stays on. It’s a business model that’s been around for a long time, and one that businesses fall back on when investors start screaming in unison: SHOW ME THE MONEY!
But is it the only way to make money in social networks?
Alternatives
There is another way the social media giants can make money, and deliver a quality product to their customers. It’s sort of an evil word on the web, especially with the unrealistic expectation that all content, and services on the web should be free. The dirty little word is: charge.
I can hear your gasps. Nasty word huh? I also know the reaction most of you have: you would never, ever pay for Facebook or Twitter.
It’s funny, because they know that too. The social networks not only fear you abandoning their services, but they fear actually putting a dollar value on what they offer to you. You might have to actually think about if being able to post publicly to all your friends and family, or upload your party pics is worth $1.99, $5.99, $9.99, or $19.99 per month. Remember the early days of AOL though? People paid and AOL made great money for a while. Didn’t seem odd then to pay for a service. Now people have become a bit spoiled by free stuff, and would rather pay for it with their attention and personal data in exchange for spammy ads.
A company you may not have heard of yet, App.net, is making a bold move, and positioning itself as an ad-free social network. 5 bucks per month or 36 bucks per year gets you spam free socializing. No ads. No fake followers. Just service. Believe it or not, people are signing up and paying to keep the spam out. Not only is the spam kept out, but part of the promise is that personal data is not collected and shared with third parties.
Google is many things to many people, but it’s at its core an advertiser. You would think its social network/social layer, +Google+ would be littered with ads, yet it isn't. It’s clean and elegant. That’s because Google understands that where and when you are served ads is important to the user experience. Google+ is “subsidized” by Google’s search tools from its other properties. If I am actually looking for a car, then yes, by all means, show me relevant car ads. If I am looking at precious, captured moments with my family and friends, that unwanted ad is more annoying than helpful.
I like advertising, and do a bit of it myself. Let me clarify. I like good, relevant, timely advertising that serves a purpose to me. There’s an actual time and place for it, and it’s not when I’m conversing with friends and family. I balked at the idea of paying for a social network at first, but when Tumblr, whose platform I do like, started serving up spam, I began reconsidering my position.
Arguments have been made that some of these social networks have grown too big to fail. Adding spammy ads in timelines won’t scare enough people off to make a dent. Like with everything else, most people will just get used to it.
Are you ok with spam in your social network life? Are you concerned about your information being collected and sold? Would you ever pay for a social network like +App.net ? Would you consider switching to something of a hybrid like +Google+ to get away from ads you don't want?
No one likes email spam right? You only give your email address to family, close friends, and institutions you conduct business with. Yet no matter how great your spam filter is, the junk mail still gets through. The people sending it may call it advertising or direct marketing, but to us it’s just a nuisance we can never seem to fully cleanse ourselves of. It’s one thing to opt in or subscribe to something you might actually be interested in (otherwise known as "bacn", but pronounced bacon), and another to get the totally unsolicited, unrelated junk we affectionately call spam. Luckily we have filters to deal with a good percentage of it.
However, today spam has become more sophisticated. It’s made an evolutionary leap into the popular social networks we use daily; Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and the list keeps growing. We used to be able to opt in by liking a brand page, or following our favorite companies. While we can still do that, now we are inundated with ads for brands we didn’t like or follow. They are called “sponsored” posts, and they pollute our timelines and news feeds like garbage in a river. Unlike email though, where your internet service or email provider fights hard to keep spam out of your emails, it’s the social networks serving up the spam.
It’s the Business Model! Duh!!
Why would they shove all this spam down our throats, while taking the risk of annoying and alienating their users? The obvious short answer is money, and not having any other options to keep the lights on. Those massive data collecting servers don’t pay for themselves. Employees don’t volunteer at the social networks. They have bills too. Stuff needs to get paid for. I get it.
But it’s old media thinking. In television, you suffer through 2-3 minutes worth of ads during your favorite shows. In publishing, sometimes the ads are bigger than the news stories, or take up more pages than actual content in the magazines. Now, while you’re catching up with your friends’ and families’ lives, there are ads in between that look so much like a genuine post, you are tempted to click. It makes you pause and double-take to be sure, but sometimes you do click. Add up a few million accidental clicks, and a light bulb stays on. It’s a business model that’s been around for a long time, and one that businesses fall back on when investors start screaming in unison: SHOW ME THE MONEY!
But is it the only way to make money in social networks?
Alternatives
There is another way the social media giants can make money, and deliver a quality product to their customers. It’s sort of an evil word on the web, especially with the unrealistic expectation that all content, and services on the web should be free. The dirty little word is: charge.
I can hear your gasps. Nasty word huh? I also know the reaction most of you have: you would never, ever pay for Facebook or Twitter.
It’s funny, because they know that too. The social networks not only fear you abandoning their services, but they fear actually putting a dollar value on what they offer to you. You might have to actually think about if being able to post publicly to all your friends and family, or upload your party pics is worth $1.99, $5.99, $9.99, or $19.99 per month. Remember the early days of AOL though? People paid and AOL made great money for a while. Didn’t seem odd then to pay for a service. Now people have become a bit spoiled by free stuff, and would rather pay for it with their attention and personal data in exchange for spammy ads.
A company you may not have heard of yet, App.net, is making a bold move, and positioning itself as an ad-free social network. 5 bucks per month or 36 bucks per year gets you spam free socializing. No ads. No fake followers. Just service. Believe it or not, people are signing up and paying to keep the spam out. Not only is the spam kept out, but part of the promise is that personal data is not collected and shared with third parties.
Google is many things to many people, but it’s at its core an advertiser. You would think its social network/social layer, +Google+ would be littered with ads, yet it isn't. It’s clean and elegant. That’s because Google understands that where and when you are served ads is important to the user experience. Google+ is “subsidized” by Google’s search tools from its other properties. If I am actually looking for a car, then yes, by all means, show me relevant car ads. If I am looking at precious, captured moments with my family and friends, that unwanted ad is more annoying than helpful.
I like advertising, and do a bit of it myself. Let me clarify. I like good, relevant, timely advertising that serves a purpose to me. There’s an actual time and place for it, and it’s not when I’m conversing with friends and family. I balked at the idea of paying for a social network at first, but when Tumblr, whose platform I do like, started serving up spam, I began reconsidering my position.
Arguments have been made that some of these social networks have grown too big to fail. Adding spammy ads in timelines won’t scare enough people off to make a dent. Like with everything else, most people will just get used to it.
Are you ok with spam in your social network life? Are you concerned about your information being collected and sold? Would you ever pay for a social network like +App.net ? Would you consider switching to something of a hybrid like +Google+ to get away from ads you don't want?
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