Slashdot Mirror
Google Seeking "FriendRank" Patent
theodp writes "In its just-published patent application for Network Node Ad Targeting, Google hatches plans for identifying the most influential of a circle of friends and providing this 'influencer' with 'financial incentives from advertisers in exchange for permission to display advertisements on the member's [social network] profile' (sound familiar, Jeremy?). Doing so will 'provide advertisers with the option of targeting either all members in the community or advertising only on the profile of the influencer, thereby targeting the entire community,' explains Google. Who says you can't buy friendship!"
If your best friend will go with this, I think it's time to find a new friend.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
For those of us that like seeing our 'friends' beat the piss out of each other for out 'affections' ?
Great. So now when Viacom sues Google they'll not only get viewership information, they'll know all the relationships between those viewers too.
For every innovative google algorithm there is an equal and opposite new type of spamming technique created.
For every innovative google algorithm there is an equal and opposite new type of spamming technique created.
It's called "marketing" - on the job interview. Never say "spam".
A friend of mine was interviewing at a giant junk mail company. during the interview, they took him into this room that showed their "Products". He exclaimed, "I never seen so much junk mail in my life!"
The interviewer, in a terse voice, "That's DIRECT MARKETING!"
He still got the job.
I think this could go a long way, although I sure hope my friends don't get into it.
.. can't money buy you love?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
As usual, a one-paragraph description of a patent covers exactly the parts that are prior art without actually pointing out the new parts.
The novel bits include:
* Being able to advertise things based on the profile of your friends. You may have forgotten to put "skydiving" in your list of interests, but if a dozen of your friends also have "skydiving", you might be in the target market.
* Saving money by advertising only to certain valuable people, not just those with interests but those who know a lot of others with those interests. Why pay for 1,000 ad impressions when 10 would do?
Patents are hard to read, but I recommend skipping the abstract and the claims and going ahead to the description. You'll learn a lot more.
People with a lot of friends on social networking sites probably don't have all that much influence. These are people who agree to be friends with whomever asks them, and will spam people with friend requests. I see pages with "8,000 friends!", and think "uh, no. This guy does not not know 8,000 people personally or well enough to influence their decisions".
What this promises to do is make people think "Wow, if I have lots of friends on my page, I can make some money!", so I can expect a marked increase in unsolicited friend requests from people I don't know.
Not true. My girlfriend has thousands of friends on MySpace and other networking sites, almost all artists or those who appreciate the arts. She's sold original paintings worth thousands of dollars through such, generated interest in live events she's participating in, and met several people who turned into IT clients of ours. The effort invested to create that network has paid off handsomely. Can't see her selling out to any of Googles scumbag clients though... all that would achieve is to sabotage the value of what she's created.
At the end of the day, the reason these mediums are working is because people are actively rejecting anything that comes from a corporate source due to a lack of trust. That's why the corporations want to obscure themselves through schemes such as these. Won't work though... people are too sophisticated, and when they realize what's going on, they'll actively reject any message that comes from an individual who demonstrates their willingness to participate in such as this.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Malcolm Gladwell talks about this concept in his book The Tipping Point. Specifically, Google is looking for Mavens, the people that you go to for information. Mavens are the early adopters, and a circle of friends often relies on their opinions to determine whether or not to purchase a product. Marketers have been trying to find a way to specifically target Mavens for decades. I don't think that what Google is doing is very manipulative (since they are asking the Maven in the first place). I would assume that a Maven by nature would reject advertisements that he/she didn't agree with, or make comments about the ones he/she likes or doesn't like on their personal page anyways.
It's not a bug, it's a feature
As true as that may be, if Google doesn't apply for a patent, then some patent troll might just pop up a year later and sue Google for a bazillion dollars. I'm sure that the engineers at Google feel the same way you do about software patents; they just need to do things like this to protect themselves from a lawsuit.
Love sees no species.
If I have profile on facebook, they have all the power to display all the ads they want on my profile, without my permission. And they do.
The only entity in position to sell ad space of those "influential" friends is Facebook.
It is really stupid to involve users into this.
This reminds me of the questions and issues that rose from Multi Level Marketing, tapping into Social Networking skills of members to bring benefits to the Mothership and its crew.
There's no way this method is vulnerable to fraud! It's totally solid!
Why not? Because a well targeted ad is worth 1000 (or more) crappy ones. For a long time slashdot showed me ads for IBM mainframes and microsoft products, neither of which I use, so it was just wasted ad space. If, however, I had "managed IBM mainframes" or "MSCE" in my LinkedIn profile, then that kind of ad would make sense.