Facebook, brands, advertising and privacy
March 12, 2013By now, you may have repeatedly heard that if Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest (by population) in the world.
Facebook is a massive platform for brands.
As a part of a customised eStrategy, Digital Tsunami counsels brands on the use of Facebook pages for their products and services, to access a global market of over a billion consumers.
Ever “Liked” a product, video or post? Apps are increasingly utilising Facebook users to collate, integrate and promote personal data and preferences. If an individual has not manually selected certain privacy settings, a brand can use that data as a recommendation or advertisement on Facebook.
Whilst brand advocates have contributed to the success of Facebook, there are also elements of privacy of which responsible corporations and sensible individuals must be cognizant.
This is not a new issue. MIT published a study “Facebook: Threats to Privacy” in 2005. At that time, approximately 12-22% of users actually revealed their cellphone numbers, with s a noticeable gender difference. Amongst the study respondents, (University students from Harvard, MIT, NYU and Oklahoma), women were less likely to publish their cell number.
More recently, Mashable published a Facebook privacy guide, and just yesterday, promoted SimpleWash, a cleansing agent to remove unwanted and negative content and even photo tags. Other resources exist to advise Facebook users on protecting their identifiable data, such as Reclaim Privacy.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has published a comprehensive and easy-to-use guide to the privacy and security settings for individual Facebook accounts: “A Guide to Facebook’s Privacy Options“.
While brand managers will want to capitalise on brand advocates, as individual Facebook account holders, they may well want to protect their own privacy.
Read more about eStrategy
Read more blogs about Social Media
Read more blogs about Advertising and Marketing
Read more blogs about Statistics
References:
http://www.facebook.com/help/privacy
http://mashable.com/2011/02/07/facebook-privacy-guide/
http://mashable.com/2013/03/10/simplewash/
http://www.reclaimprivacy.org
http://allfacebook.com/facebook-privacy-settings_b31836
http://www.wired.com/business/2010/05/facebook-transparency-tool/
http://simplewa.sh
From Our Clients
Andrew and his team have supported Foodbank by providing web services for more than a decade.
In fact, they have just undertaken the first complete redevelopment of the original Foodbank website they built for us, and have been maintaining so ably since.
Andrew is creative and passionate and helps us to keep up, constantly looking for new ways to add value and improve our online communications channels.
Andrew was able to create an entirely new website in a short period of time and to budget. He and his team worked very well with both our Marketing and IT team.
I have viewed all the videos and would like to commend you on the excellent quality.
I would like to thank you for the excellent editing which portrays the event as dynamic and stimulating.
I recently engaged Digital Tsunami to design and build my 60-page website. I'm a website copywriter who relies heavily on web-generated business, so my own online presence needs to be impeccable.
The solution that Digital Tsunami supplied is brilliant. It meets my needs perfectly; it's clean, bold, elegant, fast, and easy to edit. I've had lots of very positive feedback about it, and since launch, my request for quote rate and conversion rate have increased markedly.
The team at Digital Tsunami was incredibly responsive, delivering a solution well ahead of deadline. Their technical knowledge was exceptional, they were innovative, and they were very meticulous. What's more, they understood my business and technical requirements and translated them into a user-friendly, refined, professional site which is conceptually simple and cohesive.
I have no hesitation in recommending the website design services of Digital Tsunami to any business .. that needs a stand-out online presence.
We are all very happy with the new website and believe it captures the essence of the Group One brand.
Andrew and colleagues were able to assist at every step of the website production process, providing a sleek layout with high quality images. We would like to thank the Digital Tsunami team for an excellent job.