Mark Cuban: Facebook Is Driving Away Brands — Starting With Mine

concealment sends this quote from an article at ReadWriteWeb: "Tech billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says he is fed up with Facebook and will take his business elsewhere. He's sick of getting hit with huge fees to send messages to his team's fans and followers. Two weeks ago Cuban tweeted out a screen grab of an offer he'd received from Facebook. The social network wanted to charge him $3,000 to reach 1 million people. Along with the screen grab, Cuban wrote, 'FB is blowing it? This is the first step. The Mavs are considering moving to Tumblr or to new MySpace as primary site.'"

Comments

Congratulations, Mr. Cuban!

[game kid]

Congratulations, Mr. Cuban! Facebook now considers you not just a product, but an actual user/venture-capital source!

Re:Congratulations, Mr. Cuban!

[jhoegl]

Wait wait wait... so you are telling me it costs money to run a business?
Bastards!

Funny thing is, this costs less than emailing 1 million people.

Re:Congratulations, Mr. Cuban!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing is, this costs less than emailing 1 million people.

Only if you're doing something really stupid, like paying MailChimp for high volume mailing. And even then you could mail those 1m people six times.

To be clear, nothing wrong with MailChimp, you just don't use those services for real high volume.

Re:Congratulations, Mr. Cuban!

[helix2301]

He bought Facebook stock and lost a fortune on it http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/09/09/1417242/mark-cuban-blames-himself-for-losing-money-on-facebook-ipo so now he has a vendetta against them.

Re:Congratulations, Mr. Cuban!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stuuupid. Take into consideration what it really takes, bare minimum, to send that note to his followers.

Re:Congratulations, Mr. Cuban!

[jep305]

Wait... you're saying Facebook is a business??

That is cheap

[Billly Gates]

And effective too with marketing. $3,000 might seem expensive for us but if you have million fans and make hundreds of millions then the fee is a drop in the bucket that will generate far more revenue than spamming people for tickets and events.

Re:That is cheap

[jellomizer]

Compared to most other forms of Mass Marketing this is a rather fair deal.
Say you get 1% to respond of one million that is 10,000. If your product has $0.30 in profit then you break even. But who has $0.30 in profit, For a cheap product you usually get at least a few bucks out of it. So you pay for you Marking Cost. You could try the competitors and you may get a smaller rate, however you will not reach as many people.

Re:That is cheap

[Hatta]

.3 cents per person is really pretty cheap. Somehow telemarketers stay in business, and they're paying someone $8/hr to make what 20 calls an hour? If it's not worth .3 cents per person to contact them, you probably have no actual business contacting them at all.

Re:That is cheap

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While I have no pity for Mr. Cuban(Oh, sure, facebook is just going to suck up the hosting bills for your web page and messaging system forever, for free...), this may well signal that Facebook has an actual problem...

If somebody who is, and has, actually run businesses and made money, and so forth, and is facebooking for commercial purposes is willing to throw a little tantrum in public about the price, this suggests that they don't think that facebook is worth what it is charging(or they do; but are willing to piss off a valuable communications channel over $3k). That would be bad for facebook. If you are an advertising vendor(which they are attempting to be, in this case) and a potential account laughs in your face, walks out, and then publishes an open letter mocking your offer as insultingly expensive, that isn't a good sign.

People whining about having to pay for things is largely irrelevant. People who are accustomed to paying for things refusing to pay for your product? That should make you nervous. Facebook has proven that people will flock to them at the $0 price point; but they have yet to do much testing of the demand curve at higher costs. If it turns out to be extremely elastic...

Re:That is cheap

[scottbomb]

This is true. I've worked in advertising and $3000 ain't bad. Sounds like a temper-tantrum to me.

"The Mavs are considering moving to Tumblr or to new MySpace as primary site."

That's like going from primetime TV to midnight re-runs.

Re:That is cheap

[Billly Gates]

Well if companies stop using them then FB will respond by lowering their prices. That is capitalism 101. Advertising and marketing aint cheap.

I do respect Mr. Cuban. I watch him on sharktank and out of all the clueless MBA morons, he knows his stuff and is intelligent and very hard working to make sure his clients are happy and performing well.

It is true I read Ford was paying $1 million for advertising on FB with full page ads. That is crazy, but if you think about it more eyeballs look at FB than TV without DVRs in 2012. If that $3000 per tweets for a game represents just a 10% increase in sales that can pay for itself easily!

If Cuban does not think that is fair he can fund another FB startup.

Re:That is cheap

[Albanach]

Will it really? It will be hard to monetize a lot of those fans because they may not be close to the team. Contacting your one million followers twice a week will cost you about $300,000 a year.

So assuming you can make money from 5% of your followers (50,000) you need to make $6 profit from them that you wouldn't otherwise have made for it to be profitable.

Given they have contact details and probably an email address for the fans who are most likely to spend money, I'd expect the 5% figure is actually very high and the actual figure might be somewhere in the ½% range. That would make the necessary profit per new customer to be in the region of $60/year.

Re:That is cheap

[bfandreas]

It also is a good BS filter.

It makes you think twice about sending that "lulz! hug U! luv Marky" message you feel the urge to share with the world. A million of interested leads(they actually opted in with the semi-soundness of mind that's required for Facebook) has got to be worth something.

Remind me: I've heard the name before but what is he supposed to be selling? I'm too lazy to look him up on Wikipedia. I've lost track of dotcom millionaires.

Re:That is cheap

[rtfa-troll]

Compared to most other forms of Mass Marketing this is a rather fair deal.

Right; but it shouldn't be compared to "other forms of Mass Marketing" for several reasons.

• because this was a free service, which was marketed as a free service and then changed
• because in this case we are talking about people who voluntarily chose to connect to a company to get all it's messages
• because this direct connectivity as in Google+, Facebook and so on is something completely new and different from tradional messaging

The first; that this is a bait and switch operation, is for me the most important. However even though I feel some sympathy for these people, they fundamentally brought it on themselves and this is a situation where it's the people's responsibility to do something different next time. Never lock yourself in to a computing product controlled by one vendor without a written guarantee of indefinite access to good terms written by a lawyer you can trust. This is something most people knew in the pre-Windows era.

Compare the diference between what happened when the Gnome Foundation went rogue with the same situation from Microsoft. Gnome replaced Gnome 2 with a completely different Gnome 3 interface which doesn't fit old users needs. Microsoft is replacing Windows with Metro + a backwards compatibility interface which also doesn't fit user's needs. Because the Gnome users have the source code and multiple suppliers, XFCE, Cinnamon and Unity have sprung up as interfaces designed to cater to the needs of users that Gnome 3 doesn't fit for. By the time people are forced to switch they will have a choice which is right for them. Microsoft is going to force people who are locked into Windows to accept whatever Microsoft wants them to accept. Only those people that can switch to OS/X or Linux will be able to escape.

To achieve the same in social networking, even people who use Facebook need to concentrate on using other solutions wherever they can provide equivalent functionality. Otherwise we all end up locked in.

Re:That is cheap

[pscottdv]

Mr. Cuban is quoted as saying:

"Remember most brands don't have social media departments. They rely on common sense. If someone likes your brand, it seems like common sense to me that you can expect your posts to reach 100% of those that like your brand. Doesn't it to you?"

I guess if I had spent money on Facebook advertising to get likes only to discover that I can't market to those people without spending even more money, I would feel a bit ripped off. Why did I spend the upfront money getting the likes again?

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

People who buy tickets pay a high profit margin which makes sense to advertise.

He sells tickets to games which can go from $60 to $3,000 easily and only in season. So that $300,000/4 would be more like $75,000 for basketball season. Now lets say that 5% spent on average $90. $90 x 50,000 = $450,000 in revenue - $75,000 = $375,000. Not bad.

We have no clue what he makes as the revenue is more than just eyeballs at the game. Hotdogs, parking, merchandise, and TV time all generate revenue and costs.

Re:That is cheap

[bfandreas]

This is true. I've worked in advertising and $3000 ain't bad. Sounds like a temper-tantrum to me.

"The Mavs are considering moving to Tumblr or to new MySpace as primary site."

That's like going from primetime TV to midnight re-runs.

Hasn't baseball moved to midnight reruns by now? Also there is a new MySpace? What happened to the old one? I suddenly feel really out of touch with stuff that really doesn't interest me. I shall put an appointment in my next weeks calendar and agonize a full second over his woe, grief and doom.That poor, poor man who's relevance had eluded me at the moment I hit the submit button. Also: Rich guy billed by FB. News at 11.

Re:That is cheap

[Nikker]

You may not be taking into account that each company will send at least one posting a day but most of them are just basic updates to keep the company name fresh in their heads. If (in this example) you have 1M followers and you send just one update per day $3000x30 = $90,000/month or $1,095,000 a year just to send one message a day to people who have already shown interest in what ever you happen to be babbling about. So compare this to Twitter where I can send verbal diarrhea all day long for next to nothing and we now have a supply/demand curve. So while overall you're spending roughly $1/follower/year(for only one post/day) when you compare it to twitter you start to see that you can engage your fan base (not necessarily your customer base) in a much more responsive manner. You can try out different tactics and see what fits. If you blab too much people will stop listening (not following) you, if you get it right you will attract more attention and followers.

So as the rhetoric goes the market will work its self out as we see today with Cubans $0.02.

Re:That is cheap

[Trilkin]

Mavericks-related merchandise probably. All you had to do was read the first few lines of the summary to see that he's the owner of the Mavericks and he's talking about their Facebook page.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

I do this type of stuff as a hobby, though on a different scale.

This charge is for pushing out a story as a promoted post, which IMHO is about the equivalent of sending out an email blast.

So, why is this a good deal? 1) Mark Cuban didn't pay for the acquisition of the Mavericks 2+ million fans. I highly doubt that any mailing list owned by the Mav's org is that large. 2) Targeting. With Facebook you can target ads and pushes to very specific audiences. Try doing that with a mailing list (or twitter). 3) Cost. 3k to have an 1+ million audience? Mail Chimp charges 4k PER MONTH for that type of functionality.

Of course, the first question needs to be WHY do you want to do this and then it needs to be WHAT is your expected outcome. If you are just pushing this out to say "Woo Hoo, first game tonight", then don't bother, use twitter or just push a new story up. If you are pushing a story about seats that are available, a promotion or new product (IE, revenue generating), then go for it.

Re:That is cheap

[MisterSquid]

So compare this to Twitter where I can send verbal diarrhea all day long for next to nothing and we now have a supply/demand curve.

Thus is revealed Twitter's forthcoming business plan.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

But he only has $2900 in cash on him usually.

Re:That is cheap

[HarrySquatter]

The first; that this is a bait and switch operation,

No it's not. A bait-and-switch is advertising a product for some price and then when a customer comes you tell them the product is not available and you attempt to sell them something else. Changing a free service to being partially paid-for is not a bait-and-switch.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

There was already an advertising crash on the internet when people realized that flashing annoying shit in users' faces doesn't actually lead to sales. Back then, big ad networks were holding the bag, slashed their payouts, and a bunch of web sites were left to figure out other ways of making money.

This time, it's Facebook holding the bag, for their own web site. Another advertising slash when they realize perfectly targeted demographics still doesn't result in sales might kill it, which is probably good for the world.

Re:That is cheap

[MisterSquid]

Apologies for replying to my own post, but I think I may have been a little *too* cryptic.

What I mean is that we all know Twitter can't keep on keepin' on as they have been. Limiting the extent of a user's tweets to some determined-by-proprietary-algorithm subset of followers would be the first step. The second step would be a fee to make sure a tweet reaches x number of users. The more followers a user/brand has, the more money to reach that brand's followers.

This seems like sound business sense to me.

Re:That is cheap

[Enderandrew]

This is precisely a bait and switch. You promise a free service, refuse to offer the free service and then demand money for the exact same functionality that was promised for free.

Combine this with recent accusations that Facebook's feeds have been broken on purpose as of late to necessitate promoting posts, and accusations of click-fraud eating up paid advertising and you have to wonder if Facebook is beginning to shoot themselves in the foot. They have tons of users, but they don't seem to know how to monetize that well.

http://memeburn.com/2012/11/is-facebook-really-broken-on-purpose/

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-accused-of-click-fraud-by-advertiser-2012-7

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Hasn't baseball moved to midnight reruns by now?

Mavs are basketball. Nice try though.

Re:That is cheap

[_xeno_]

.3 cents per person is really pretty cheap.

Is it? If you read the actual article, Cuban's complaints seem to be that there are extra costs not included in that figure. Part of his problem is that they had to advertise for Facebook to drive people to their Facebook page in the first place. So there's already money invested which should be taken into consideration as part of the "cost per person."

He also points out that since it's variable and on a per-post basis, it's basically impossible for them to plan ahead - they can't say "OK, we're dedicating $100,000 this year to our Facebook budget" and then choose when and what to post based on that, as the price per post can change. He also seems to suggest that this actually increases the costs, as it adds a new layer of accounting for every post.

I find that second argument to be the most persuasive. If the cost per post really does change and budgeting really is impossible, then yes, that's definitely a problem and one that Facebook should fix. He seems to be OK with the idea of paying Facebook, but he wants the costs to be known ahead of time and paid up front, rather than on a per-post basis.

Cuban also appears to be betting that, since they have to advertise to get people to the Facebook page in the first place, he can advertise their Twitter feed and get people to follow that, instead. That way their upfront costs would remain the same, but they wouldn't have extra unexpected and unknowable costs in the future. I'm not sure I entirely believe this, but if he's right and it's their advertising that's driving people to their Facebook page and not Facebook as a platform itself, then why should he pay Facebook extra for the privilege of needing to advertise for them in the first place?

Of course, I suppose we'll only find out if he's right in a year or two, after he tries out moving to other platforms. I'm not so sure he is, but then again, I never "liked" any businesses on Facebook in the first place.

Re:That is cheap

[TheRaven64]

These are people who have already opted in to receive messages from you. A fair comparison is people who have subscribed to your mailing list, RSS feed, or whatever. If it's costing you three cents per subscriber to your mailing list, then you're probably doing something wrong.

Re:That is cheap

[jvkjvk]

So, if you could point me to the contract you signed with Facebook promising you a free service I would appreciate it.

Otherwise, I fail to understand why you believe Facebook promised you anything.

They built something and let you use it. Is that what you refer to as a "promise"?

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

All that will happen is that Facebook will allow Cuban to send ads for free. That's all he really wants. Screw everyone else. Then you'll hear him giving advice to every other would-be VC that, "you're crazy not to be using Facebook."

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

No contract is involved (just terms of use), but Facebook has indeed made the promise that its service "is free and always will be."

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2011/09/facebook-will-always-be-free-company-says/

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

They built something and let you use it. Is that what you refer to as a "promise"?

We all understand that stuff would flow better if everyone would just realize that everyone else is an asshat out to rip them off at every possible chance. Living like that is even more depressing than those people who live their lives trying to explain to everyone else what a fursona is.

Here in Slightly More Optimistic World where we value our sanity and pretend that there is a tiny drop of humanity somewhere in the people we are dealing with, we recognize that there are such things as promises that don't require contracts signed by blood and duly notorized before a justice of the peace on the first waning crescent of the harvest season. For instance, there are advertised services.

Re:That is cheap

[sensei moreh]

I believe XFCE sprang up long before Gnome-3 reared it's ugly shell

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

It is inevitable that someone would try to link this to how evil Microsoft is. I bet you are the guy that comments on every article making them all about how evil Microsoft is forcing users to use Windows 8. I can see it now, Headline "Global Warming Causes Ice to Melt". Your Comment, "Just like Microsoft is causing the hopes and dreams of millions of users to melt by making them use their software."
By the way, XFCE was around long before Gnome put out Gnome3.
Note: After using Windows 8 for a while, it is actually pretty good.

Re:That is cheap

[krashnburn200]

wooooosh... If he truly doesn't know that, it only makes it better.

Re:That is cheap

[Pseudonym Authority]

Bait and switch is not concerned with contracts. If I own a `tobacco' shop, and I advertise in Stoner Weekly a 99% off sale on bongs, then when customers start showing up, charge them full price, I am committing fraud. Does Facebook advertise itself as free, then charge you? That would be bait and switch. Climb down from your ivory tower and recognize that people live in a real world and your purely academic distinctions are meaningless (and wrong).

Re:That is cheap

[Hatta]

These are people who have already opted in to receive messages from you.

Then it should be even easier to recoup your costs than if you were cold-mailing.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of depends on your POV: if you see it as advertising: cheap.
If you see it giving away info about yourself that others are interested in (and, thus, part of the reason why they're on the medium in the first place): very, very expensive.

Coincidentally, I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine (partially) because I'm sure /. is not going to charge me $3000 for mentioning that.

Re:That is cheap

[Yaa 101]

Sorry to distract to a sideline of this conversation but the Gnome thing is a symptom of a wider problem in the GNU/Linux world at this moment.

There is a war going on, a pityful money grabbing one packaged as an idiological one.

Simple said, Canonical and Red Hat are both undermining the GPL by changing the progammable environment into extreme complex beasts so that all others (not backed by lots of r&d money and lawyers) lose entrance to the material wheter it is GPL or not does not matter anymore, the entrance is too high.
They do it under a guise of having idiological Issues with each other, one backing Gnome and the other Unity.

Recently even the Kernel developers got caught into this mess, having Linus calling some maintainer of UDEV a lier.
Google UDEV and systemd to see the whole gory mess, and mind my words, this is only the beginning of the troubles in GNU/Linux land.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

You should've just used a car analogy, it wouldn't have been any wider of the mark.

To use yours though, this is like saying the bongs are 99% off in 2009, then charging full price for them in 2012.

Unless you can point to the material where Facebook made representations that every service on it would be free forever.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of his problem is that they had to advertise for Facebook to drive people to their Facebook page in the first place

Most companies put their facebook ads on existing adverts/website/material. That means it's being added to content they're already producing, so the additional cost is negligible (a few minutes of the graphic/web designers time). Ok sure some'll put posters in their shop windows too, but that's a one-time cost and pretty cheap.

I've never seen a company run an advertising campaign purely pushing their facebook page.

Facebook would be used to complement your existing advertising campaign, not replace it...

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too out of touch, I only just heard of it too and it's only about 6 weeks ago they announced a preview of the new myspace. It hasn't even launched yet.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/25/myspace-is-back-and-shiny

Re:That is cheap

[LordLucless]

This is precisely a bait and switch. You promise a free service, refuse to offer the free service and then demand money for the exact same functionality that was promised for free.

So what, no companies are allowed to change their prices, ever, or it's considered to be a bait-and-switch? That's just ridiculous. Bait-and-switch is not what you describe, its as the GP said: "baiting" someone with an ad for a cheap project, then claiming the advertised product is no longer available, and conning them into going with a more expensive one when they arrive in the store.

And no, Facebook never promised that companies could spam everybody who "liked" them with messages they were guaranteed to see.

Re:That is cheap

[dnahelicase]

In other news, Mark Cuban admits that what he says isn't worth 3 cents. Maybe he should focus on a more profitable demographic, or have something more worthwhile to say.

Just my 2 cents...

Re:That is cheap

[LordLucless]

You may not be taking into account that each company will send at least one posting a day but most of them are just basic updates to keep the company name fresh in their heads. If (in this example) you have 1M followers and you send just one update per day $3000x30 = $90,000/month or $1,095,000 a year just to send one message a day to people who have already shown interest in what ever you happen to be babbling about.

If Facebook is saving me from that sort of spam, I'm happy for them to charge however much they want. They're also protecting brands who would otherwise do that - if I get that sort of spammy crap every day, then I'm going to unlike them so I don't have to put up with it - same as companies who spam via email.

Re:That is cheap

[cayenne8]

I'm not on FB, but had thought about opening a business acct only....

If people like or subscribe to you.....they don't get their updates on their walls, etc anymore for free?

If you want to get any message out on FB, you now have to pay for it??

Re:That is cheap

[AlXtreme]

Recently even the Kernel developers got caught into this mess, having Linus calling some maintainer of UDEV a lier.
Google UDEV and systemd to see the whole gory mess, and mind my words, this is only the beginning of the troubles in GNU/Linux land.

People disagree with each other and call each other names on the internet, wow what an eye-opener.

If you think this is bad you might want to look back a few years on lkml, or any other major open source project. Given the ego's and the ability to instantly spout a reply from the top of your head it's a miracle there are intelligent discussions at all on the Internet.

Disagreements and differing interests go all the way back and are one of the reasons we have such a huge eco-system of Free software. IMHO without them we still would be waiting for HURD.

Re:That is cheap

[JaredOfEuropa]

Really? I am not overly impressed with the quality of messages I get from the people who are paying for the privilege, on any medium or platform. That sort of content is called "advertising", and it sucks anytime.

It's not bad that FB wants to charge a wealthy commercial party to reach millions of customers, but it is bad that they broke the notification system itself in the process... Nonprofits or even people who happen to have a lot of followers also have to pay up, or their posts won't reach all of their followers. And if you follow someone, you might not get to see all of their updatess either unless they pay up.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a bad analogy. The simple fact is that no one is locked in to using Facebook. They gave it away for free for a while to these businesses, now they want to make some money on it from companies that are making money using Facebook's resources. They are free to go somewhere else if they want to, no one is forcing them to use Facebook. Mark Cuban is just a greedy bastard that doesn't want to pay to use someone else's resources.

Re:That is cheap

[dave562]

As you point out, these costs are relatively inexpensive compared to traditional media. A Facebook friend of mine is a party promoter and he raised the same issue. It used to be free, but now he has to pay for it. I asked him how much he used to have to spend on flyers, promoters to pass them out, voicemail boxes for people to dial into, etc. It turns out that it costs less to advertise on Facebook than it does to do it the way he used to do it. That reality did not stop him from whining about it though.

Nobody likes to pay for what was once free. In reality though, they are coming out ahead. Look at a service like Constant Contact for comparison. Advertising is not free. Facebook is offering value by bringing everyone together. The promoters do not need to collect email addresses, update contact lists, etc. All of that is already done for them.

My suggestion for business people who do not want to pay Facebook is to go back to the old way of doing it. Have fun maintaining a mail server, mailing list software, getting past spam filters, etc etc

Re:That is cheap

[0100010001010011]

It's starting to turn me off. Somewhere in the scheme of things it decided that I was a smart and wealthy individual and must want the new Samsung S3. There is a massive banner ad on my facebook page and all over the android app.

No. I don't care about the fucking S3. Move on. Now it's starting to show me that my 'acquaintances'' liked Walmart or Levi. Wouldn't I like to like them too?

No. Sweet Jesus. It's turning me off where I'm ready to move my stuff. Problem is I'm an amateur photographer. I have close to 20,000 photos tagged and sorted in facebook, all with comments. But if this keeps up I'll take my business elsewhere.

Re:That is cheap

[0100010001010011]

But you have to use that power wisely. If you start sending 10 tweets a day it's not like that number magically goes up by 10x. It means that people unsubscribe or they get fed up with reading all your crap. Which is about where I'm at with facebook. Sure, put some targeted ads in there. But if every time I go to the mobile app I have to scroll through 2 pages of companies my friends liked or another Samsung Galaxy ad. I'm going to stop using it.

Re:That is cheap

[hjf]

I have a FB business account and a page with 1800 fans. I can reach them just fine and pay nothing. Now, facebook also offers me that, if i pay, I can reach more people (non-fans). I did it - it worked. I don't do it anymore because I'm, let's say, "restructuring" my business. But I'll do it again sometime.

FWIW: I'm bidding up to 3 cents per click, but on average I pay 1 cent per click.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

People are fucking stupid. Facebook charges you to PROMOTE POSTS, you're not required to do this for them to show up on someone's wall. It was never a free service that they made expensive, it was a non-existing service that they just put online.

Re:That is cheap

[Nikker]

If you blab too much people will stop listening (not following) you, if you get it right you will attract more attention and followers.

Re:That is cheap

[fredgiblet]

Second. W8 isn't the big deal that it's made out to be.

Re:That is cheap

[Dahamma]

Except it wasn't a product, it was just a random post to the Mavericks page. Facebook basically wanted to charge him $3000 to bypass their "spam filter" so it went to the top of everyone's news feed.

They claim they "It's Not A Shakedown - We're Trying To Fight Spam" but SPAM is unsolicited junk email. When you specifically choose to follow a page you are signing up for whatever posts they make to the page. And what's even worse is Facebook provides a way for someone to choose what types of posts they see in this case, *unless* Facebook gets paid in which case they are explicitly encouraging the spam...

But hey, it's their service and it's free and ad supported. They have a right to do things like this to make money, and if you don't like it the appropriate response is to stop using the service, as Cuban has done. That and bitch about their hypocrisy and apparent redefinition of "spam", which is more satisfying but usually less productive (unless you are a billionaire who influences purchasing decisions for dozens of companies... in which case bitching is both satisfying AND productive!)

Re:That is cheap

[byjove]

Do you really reach all 1,800 fans with your post? Have you looked at your actual reach counts? We have dozens of FB pages here with millions of followers. At the beginning of this year, our posts reached an average of 24% of our followers. After F8, it dropped to 16%. As of last month, our posts reach 4% of our audience. All due to the way Facebook has changed their EdgeRank algorithm. If we want our posts to reach more of our audience, we have to pay.

Re:That is cheap

[DerekLyons]

And he's seriously over reacting too. Facebook didn't tell him he couldn't post, nor did they "charge him" or require him to pay to post - they offered to sell him advertising slots to expand the reach of his posts. Hell, even my tiny three post a week photoblog page (https://www.facebook.com/FairwaterPhotography) gets those offers. I just click "no thanks" and go on my merry way.

So, there's something else going on here... either he's a jackass (not impossible), clueless on the matter (improbable but not impossible), or he has another agenda entirely (likely).

But I wish him luck in finding an equally efficient broad demographic platform - Twitter isn't it, and neither is MySpace.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Another billionaire, yeh that's right, billionaire complaining about being given the option to spend a few thousand dollars...

Re:That is cheap

[dave562]

You're not on Facebook.

Just stop. You have no idea what you are talking about. Facebook users can post and their posts will get to everyone who has not muted them. I can still send things to my mom, my cat and my college roommate. My cat thinks I am annoying though, so odds are that twat will not see what I have to post.

What has changed is people who have "Fan" pages. Those people who are using Facebook to promote themselves now have to pay to reach ALL of their fans. I do not have a fan page, but my understanding is that the messages still go through to some random subset of the list. To reach everyone, a person has to pay.

In a way, this is an improvement. I do not need to see a dozen posts from a local band on the day of the show that remind me that they have a show that day. By having to pay to post, they think twice before doing it. Yet when they do pay, they can be absolutely certain that the post will show up on every single one of their fan's page.

It seems like a decent deal to me. They do not have to run their own mailing list. They do not have to deal with dead address bounces. Do not have to deal with getting past spam filters. I can pretty much guarantee that the cost of promoting posts is going to fluctuate as Facebook figures out what the market is willing to pay for it.

Re:That is cheap

[dave562]

If Facebook removed your ability to post, that might be bait and switch. People can still post to their fans. It just will not reach ALL of them with 100% certainty. If they want 100% certainty, they have to pay for it.

I don't think that FB offered to guarantee delivery of every message posted on their network.

If people want 100% guaranteed delivery to all of their friends, they should setup their own SMTP server and pay for the infrastructure required to facilitate that.

Nobody is making people with Fan pages stay on Facebook. They can give FB the middle finger and go do their own thing. Everyone capable of having a reasoned thought process around the subject will come to realize that the cost is pretty reasonable. How much do you think it would cost for guaranteed delivery of an email message to one million people? How about direct mail? Robocall?

Re:That is cheap

[dave562]

What is he going to tweet? A link to a web server somewhere that he also has to pay for? How long do you think Twitter can keep on allowing people to blast a million plus followers for free?

These services have been free because they are in their infancy. Sooner or later they have to start making money. Data centers are not free. Bandwidth is not free. IT staff is not free. There are costs involved. Either the costs will be recouped, or the services will fold. Nobody can continue giving something away for free forever.

Re:That is cheap

[dave562]

The Twitter dynamic works on Facebook too. If people really care about what the Dallas Mavericks are up to, they can go directly to their page. Or more than likely, they can visit www.nba.com/mavericks. If the Mavericks have something so damn important going on that they cannot wait for people to discover it on their own, they can cough up 3 cents for a page view, times however many views they want.

Re:That is cheap

[n7ytd]

So as the rhetoric goes the market will work its self out as we see today with Cubans $0.02.

He could instead give the $0.02 to Facebook to send messages to 6.6 people.

$0.003 per person is amazingly cheap, only if the message he's trying to send reaches the right people. The old adage is, "Advertising is only expensive if it doesn't work."

The bigger message here isn't the absolute cost; it's how hard it is to get people to pay for what they're used to getting for free... the exact problem that so many startups seem to suffer.

Re:That is cheap

[Yaa 101]

I know, I have been a Linux user since kernel 1.2 series, but this is different.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

it's right on the home page. "It's free and always will be."

d'oh.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

This is no different than a $3 CPM, which would equate to a remnant inventory price in the marketing world.

The other costs he's referring to are the people who have to write the email, fix the creative, etc. These would be the same no matter what marketing message he was using. So really No change there.

As far as the accounting - if he can't fix the cost, reduce the frequency throughout the year like most do when media planning. Besides, how often do budgets stay the same for the entire year anyway? They change quite often...

Re:That is cheap

[TheRedSeven]

Yes and No.

If you (as an individual personal-account user) want to get any message out on FB to 100% of the people who follow you, you now have to pay for it. If you do not promote a post, it will reach approximately 15-20% of your friends who have you set to the default (How many updates? "Most Updates"; What types of Updates? "all are checked"), and about 50-75% of your friends who have you set to the max (How many updates? "all updates").

If you are a business page or other 'professional' account, any non-promoted post will reach 15-20% of your followers/likers/subscribers. Only if you PAY to PROMOTE your post will it reach the News Feed of 100% of your followers.

This from a friend who does a TON of work with Facebook's API and has made several requests for documentation directly from the powers-that-be at Facebook. So my source is secondhand, but he's getting it direct from the horse's mouth and I trust him--especially because this change is directly harmful to his business and he's pissed about it.

Re:That is cheap

[TheRedSeven]

Facebook users can post and their posts will get to everyone who has not muted them

False. Facebook filters individual pages too. If you make a post, only about 15-20% of your friends will see it on their News Feed if they have their settings for you set at the default (How many updates? "Most Updates"). For friends that have you set to the most visible setting ("All Updates"), you will still only reach about 50-75% of those people.

Now, FB tends to be pretty good about knowing which 50-75% of your friends are most likely to notice that they're missing your posts (the people who are labeled as 'family', those who most often show up in photos with you, and those who are all more active are MUCH more likely to find themselves in the % that SEE your post). But they are NOT transparently passing your message along to all of your friends. And you are not necessarily seeing 100% of the posts that your friends make, even if you have your settings made for "All Updates" for a specific friend.

Re:That is cheap

[pspahn]

I've never seen a company run an advertising campaign purely pushing their facebook page.

In my world, I deal with clients constantly who literally do not have a clue how to use Fecebook. They come scrambling two weeks before their site's launch date saying things like "Oh but we still need to integrate Fecebook!".

I generally sort of shrug and ask them more specific questions, which they don't have answers to.

On the contrary to what you said, while not *never*, I have *rarely* seen the companies I deal with try and push anything BUT their Fecebook page. They read an article on Huffington Post and all of a sudden the only thing they know is that "We needz Fecebook integration!" Yet they don't have a clue what this means or how they will use it.

It is not a panacea. It's a tool to be used in specific ways to generate specific increases in brand recognition (ie. revenue). Unfortunately for most people, they don't know any of these specifics and they generally expect me (a developer) to know the answers. Thus, my answer is to plop some code widget on their pages.

Re:That is cheap

[DerekLyons]

they can't say "OK, we're dedicating $100,000 this year to our Facebook budget" and then choose when and what to post based on that, as the price per post can change

The price changes only if you select "auto bid" rather than entering a fixed bid. Facebook even helpfully points this out in their help files.

Re:That is cheap

[Algae_94]

I have to agree with Mr. Cuban then. What good is posting any information on Facebook if only a random subset of your friends will see it? You can post things, doing what you can to share with other people, but Facebook will determine if they get to see it?

Re:That is cheap

[vux984]

Everyone capable of having a reasoned thought process around the subject will come to realize that the cost is pretty reasonable

This Facebook fan page shit is basically just RSS. You know what it costs to serve an RSS feed update? Next to nothing.

The trick is to get a million people to sign up to the RSS feed.

And that is sort of the 'bait and switch' situation. Facebook had what are essentially 'facebook-RSS' feeds, that other facebook users could 'subscribe to'. And it was free.

So companies spent millions of hours and dollars promoting the shit out of them to get a million subscribers... and then they have the carpet yanked out from under them -- now the feeds cost thousands to update -- at least if you want any sort of reliability that users will get the update.

They'd have perhaps been better off spending all that effort promoting actual RSS feeds all along, and then when they'd accumulated a million users facebook wouldn't be able to step in and insert a toll booth.

Too bad they got all caught up in the facebook hype. To paraphrase you 'anyone capable of having a reasoned thought process around the subject will come to realize that building a business venture on top of a social network platform gives away power to the social network platform, and really... all they REALLY provide is a cheesy proprietary hosted CMS.

Or ... in other words... jack squat.

Re:That is cheap

[Algae_94]

How easy or difficult would it be to copy your pictures out of Facebook? (I'd say move instead of copy, but Facebook will undoubtedly keep copies of them)

Re:That is cheap

[Algae_94]

I don't think this is a woosh. Unless bfandreas posts back saying he did indeed know the Mavs are a basketball team.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing how many patent trolls are extorting money from companies such as Facebook for infringing their "inventions", I'm quite frankly frankly surprised that they are charging only .3 cents per person.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

but if he's right and it's their advertising that's driving people to their Facebook page and not Facebook as a platform itself,

he's right.

so many companies and organizations advertise or promote ONLY a facebook page..

AND NOT EVEN THEIR OWN DOMAIN NAME (or site on their domain).
.
.

.

.

. .... (idiots)

Re:That is cheap

[dave562]

So in other words, Cuban should get behind Disporia. He can have his cake and eat it too. All he has to do is convince a million of his fans to leave Facebook and setup their own pod.

Technically speaking, you are right, they just provide RSS feeds. A billion or so of them, filtered and correlated and available 24x7. With unlimited photo storage, the ability to update the feeds from a smartphone in an app so easy to use that everyone from a 2 year old kid to an 80+ year old grand parent can use.

Facebook is just the outsourced IT model. Do the Dallas Mavericks want to to be in the IT business, or the basketball business? Facebook is providing a SaaS service with practically 5 9s SLA. Now they need to monetize their offering.

Anyone with an ounce of business accumen would have seen this coming a long time ago. Facebook owns the market segment called Facebook. If people do not want access to that market segment, they are free to circumvent it. I think Facebook is gambling that when people take a long and hard look at what it will cost to achieve the same functionality (ie millions of interested subscribers just one click away), they will cough up the dough to reach those subscribers.

Because seriously, what is the alternative? Convince the market that RSS readers are cool? Maintain IT infrastructure? Fork the user base? That's it.... the league can have an NBABook, where all of the NBA teams can pool their money and convince fans to ThumbsUp their favorite team page. The thing is, such a think already exists. www.nba.com Obviously that site did not have the market penetration that the Mavericks needed. If it did, they would have been better off convincing people to visit www.nba.com/mavericks, instead of Liking a FB page.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

He believes he can do better. Why should he not try a less expensive alternative if the price Facebook wants to charge doesn't please him?

Re:That is cheap

[0100010001010011]

It's not the images that are most valuable (I have copies of those). It's the meta data of people that are tagged. Etc.

Re:That is cheap

[dave562]

You're right. Their algorithms are pretty poor. For example, my fiance does not see a lot of my posts. You would think FB would place some emphasis on making sure that someone's significant other stays up to date. Maybe they figure we live together, so why waste the bandwidth?

Re:That is cheap

[timeOday]

No, the question isn't whether it would be hard to post your pictures elsewhere, but rather how hard would it be hard to get your audience to follow you there.

Re:That is cheap

[blade8086]

I think really he's saying:

Screw you Facebook! I'm big media not YOU!!!

and facebook is all like:

Yahh whtever lulz

and so mark cuban is like:

OMG! I am soooo tweeting this to urrybuddy in DALLAS!!!

and then slashdot is all:

OOO! lets post this on OUR site and show that WE are big media

and then I'm all:

What a bunch of crap! I'm going to waste five minutes of time typing some stupid thing here!

oh .. right.

Re:That is cheap

[blade8086]

Right - because Mavericks fans wouldn't sign up to any stupid website you tell them to to get exclusive news, prizes, etc.

Thats the whole point - he's saying his 'brand' doesn't need their 'brand', and so why bother paying them when they can
get a better deal helping some other less known 'social' brand become more popular, and still get all of those fun demographics and social-graph computing spy-like analytics of his fans interests, etc, which is the only reason he probably moved to facebook from whatever other (more privacy respecting) predecessor was there to start with.

Re:That is cheap

[vux984]

All he has to do is convince a million of his fans to leave Facebook and setup their own pod.

Pretty much.

Technically speaking, you are right, they just provide RSS feeds. A billion or so of them, filtered and correlated and available 24x7. With unlimited photo storage, the ability to update the feeds from a smartphone in an app so easy to use that everyone from a 2 year old kid to an 80+ year old grand parent can use.

The problem isn't SAAS per se, its the lock in to the facebook platform. If I shell out for a hosted Joomla or Drupal or whatever flavor of the day CMS you like... Diaspora even. That can be outsourced SAAS, and I could have 5 9's uptime and effectively unlimited photo storage, and enough bandwidth to serve millions for pretty close to chump change.

But I'd be in shock if the host one day decided to charge me $3000 to post an update to the site's RSS feed. ... The thing is, such a think already exists. www.nba.com Obviously that site did not have the market penetration that the Mavericks needed. If it did, they would have been better off convincing people to visit www.nba.com/mavericks, instead of Liking a FB page.

Exactly, this BLEW my mind, when I started seeing major enterprises who ALREADY had web functional presences sending their users off to facebook/what-am-i-thinking

They should have had the spigot turned the other way, let users find them on facebook, like the on facebook, whatever, but have all that as a launchpad to www.my-own-bloody-site.com.

Facebook owns the market segment called Facebook.

And this is only valuable because enterprises fell over themselves to get onto it. They handed over the power to connect with users to be cool, or something.

Half the people I know with facebook accounts only created them precisely to enter a contest, or leave a comment, or some other nonsense on a site that should have hosted it themselves.

As an enterprise, you absolutely want to be able to connect with facebook users, and go after that segment, but the last thing you should be doing is driving users into facebook, and becoming dependent on it.

That is simply too stupid for words; and yet its exactly where a lot of companies are right now.

Re:That is cheap

[hjf]

Depending on what I post. Some posts (comic book-related) reach 350 users, others (yu gi oh trading cards) reach over 500. But I'm sure all posts get at least 300 views. (I have a comic book shop, btw).

But, I'm good at virality i guess. I went in a guerrilla marketing campaign and took photos of people at the zombie walk and posted them in my facebook page. I got tens of likes in each pic, and lots of comments, and quite a few shares. Won't tell me the reach for that album but i'm sure it's very high.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

This is true. I've worked in advertising and $3000 ain't bad.

Apples to oranges.

$3000 for a million people would be a dream for other forms of media, like direct mail or telemarketing. But their goal is to get the person on the other end to buy something immediately and thus fund the whole process. With these media you can justify spending money because determining the ROI is pretty simple math.

Facebook is a tool for brand equity. It helps your fans communicate with and become invested in your brand. You start pushing product, you start losing friends. Measuring the ROI on Facebook is much tougher, but used to be really easy when the cost was ~$0 per post.

Re:That is cheap

[mattack2]

That doesn't say either way, but I think a reasonable assumption would be that they were referring to regular end users, not businesses/business accounts.

Yet, if someone thinks that was violated, they should sue.

Re:That is cheap

[TheLink]

I'm fine with them showing me that my friends liked XYZ or etc. They are my friends, it's nice to know what they like. If you're not interested in knowing what your "acquaintances" like start hiding updates from them.

What is annoying is I've noticed recently that I get posts from XYZ just because a friend liked XYZ. If I don't like XYZ I disable ALL posts from XYZ. And If FB is going to charge XYZ for "reaching" me (instead of my friend) then they are doing something wrong.

So are the 1 million people FB are trying to charge Cuban for his actual fans or include friends of his fans? If they include friends of his fans it makes it worth even less.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

from reading the article that seems to be exactly what Facebook is doing. Just because you "like" somebody doesn't mean you will get all their posts anymore. On one hand that does sound fishy.... what was the point of "liking" a brand Facebook if Facebook isn't going to automatically send you updates like coupons and such???

On the other hand, There are a lot of folks that just "like" everything they see... then "downvote" even the "sponsored posts" because they quickly get to be MLM-like material where you have to get more "likes" to get the "good" offers sent to you.

Although if he really didn't like this, the better way would be to game the system, obviously, Facebook is looking at how "fresh" the "like" is and how recently they are actually visiting your page.... so perhaps the clue is to pump up your brand with re-likes right before you do a big push. ... but it's still a bit too much work for people that already said they were following you.

Re:That is cheap

[thereitis]

That's my initial thought as well. This puts reaching 1m people in the range of most anyone in the developed world.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

It is very cheap: 3000 / 1000000 = 0.003, so it's 3/10 of a US cent per person.

The unknown is the return on the investment.

Re:That is cheap

[bill_mcgonigle]

While I have no pity for Mr. Cuban(Oh, sure, facebook is just going to suck up the hosting bills for your web page and messaging system forever, for free...)

Why do you suggest he wants it for free when he proposes a monthly fee?

Re:That is cheap

[bill_mcgonigle]

This is true. I've worked in advertising and $3000 ain't bad. Sounds like a temper-tantrum to me.

He's not complaining about the $3k, per se, he's complaining that he can't predict what the cost will be and he doesn't feel like spending money to attract new followers for a platform where he can't predict what the cost will be.

Re:That is cheap

[perryizgr8]

Cuban also appears to be betting that, since they have to advertise to get people to the Facebook page in the first place, he can advertise their Twitter feed and get people to follow that, instead.

i think if a lot of people start doing this twitter might also start doing something similar to what fb is trying to do. after all, fb and twitter cost money to run.

Re:That is cheap

[jones_supa]

You should always keep master copies of the photos.

Re:That is cheap

[perryizgr8]

isnt this exactly what fb is doing?

Re:That is cheap

[rtfa-troll]

Absolutely right. Should have made it clearer. However for the Gnome loving people it only just became important.

Re:That is cheap

[chrismcb]

It's not bad that FB wants to charge a wealthy commercial party to reach millions of customers,

Considering everyone here feels that the consumers are the product, and Cuban has essentially brought a million "products" to FB... you'd think FB should be paying Cuban, not the other way around.

Re:That is cheap

[chrismcb]

If Cuban does not think that is fair he can fund another FB startup.

Or go to FB's competition... which he claims he is doing.

Re:That is cheap

[rtfa-troll]

And no, Facebook never promised that companies could spam everybody who "liked" them with messages they were guaranteed to see.

I don't think you have understood the issue at all. This is not about "likes" this is about friends. This applies, as others have mentioned, even when sending out updates to people who have asked to see all your updates. Please have a read around.

Re:That is cheap

[LordLucless]

You can't be "friends" with "Pages" (that is, companies) on Facebook. All you can to is "like" them. This means that some of their updates will appear in your feeds. Which is determined algorithmically. Your posts don't automatically show up in your friends feeds either; that's determined by the same algorithm. If you want to guarantee they get something, send them a message.

All this complaining is from companies who want to be able to guarantee that when they push some inane crap out there, that it appears on all the feeds of all the people who've "liked" them. Yeah, technically the same's true about people and their statuses, but they dont' really give a crap. If a friend wants to see all your statuses, they can just visit your page and read em. This is all about corporations wanting another avenue to shove crap in front of your eyes.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

As an amateur photographer myself i just can't understand what the hell are your pictures doing in facebook in the first place? Do you realize that
a) facebook shows super crappy compressed versions of your images? and
b) facebook now owns your images, and can do whatever they feel like with them?

Yes, you may think "that's ok, i wouldn't sell the images anyways" but i can guarantee you won't feel the same when you see your photos in some add and realize someone actually sold them and got money for them.

Re:That is cheap

[Raenex]

Cuban has essentially brought a million "products" to FB...

Did a million people sign up for Facebook to follow the Mavericks? Or was Cuban so hot to get on Facebook because that's where the people were?

Re:That is cheap

[Raenex]

willing to throw a little tantrum in public about the price

This is Mark Cuban. He'd be willing to throw a tantrum in public over just about anything, whether it risks his profits or not.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

he's the owner of the Mavericks and he's talking about their Facebook page.

For the 5.5 billion people who live outside the USA, you should now continue to explain what "The Mavericks" are.

An aero display team? Deep-sea divers? Global fire-fighting specialists?

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

They've spent the last several years defining their operating costs by buying servers and buildings and hiring people. There's only so much they can do to reduce those costs.

If capitalism 101 says their price should be less than what it takes to run the company, they're screwed.

Re:That is cheap

[Inda]

Cynical or cryptic?

Twitter inserts one or two ads a day into my "following" stream. And to be fair to them, they are the only compnay that has tailored their ads exactly to me and my likings. Maybe they've just got lucky but I doubt it.

I only use Twitter to follow my football team. All the ads are football related. I might even click one in the future...

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

You switched arguements because your position was flawed. Caught you!

Re:That is cheap

[gl4ss]

..it's not advertising, it's opted-in messaging.
ads are something he would pay for so that other people, not on his list, would see it.
ads are those things you see on whatever random page you happen to be on.

anyways, I think this is going to hugely backfire on Facebook because now if you're a fan of some band or whatever.. you have to keep visiting their page on fb to see if they posted something! it's no longer push type of thing. this causes a huge number of unnecessary pageloads.

Re:That is cheap

[bingoUV]

If Facebook removed your ability to post, that might be bait and switch. People can still post to their fans. It just will not reach ALL of them with 100% certainty.

That is completely unreasonable. 100% is implicit in any statement. What if shopping at Amazon starts shipping with a probability of 15-20% ? Emails sent from gmail? It will all be unreasonable, as is the Facebook switch to stochastic posts.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

You are paying for Amazon. Gmail is relaying your message to a few people.

When you start paying for Facebook or Gmail starts handing out listserv access to everyone then you have a more accurate comparison.

Re:That is cheap

[bingoUV]

This is idiotic. Google has built an empire around free.

Re:That is cheap

[Algae_94]

My question was, for people that have been storing lots of images on Facebook, how easy is it to get those images back out to migrate to a different system? If you need your audience to follow the move that is a concern too.

Re:That is cheap

[jvkjvk]

But this is nothing like advertising a sale and bait and switch.

To make your analogy correct would be this:
I Advertise a "sale" - free service!
People come and get free service.
I Advertise a price increase.
People either come and pay that price or they don't come.
Those that come still expecting the old price are just SOL.
Even normal retailers work that way - just try to use that 50% off thanksgiving coupon in August, dude.

Where is the bait and switch again? Every time you come to my site there is a new "sale" advertisement and you get that.

If I create a service even if it costs me absolutely zero to continue doing, am I obligated to continue to let you use it for free if I have done so before?

Nope.

Re:That is cheap

[ultranova]

If Facebook removed your ability to post, that might be bait and switch. People can still post to their fans. It just will not reach ALL of them with 100% certainty. If they want 100% certainty, they have to pay for it.

I don't know if this is bait and switch, but if arguing "you can post for free, but your messages aren't actually delivered unless you pay" gets you anything but a contempt of court charge, then that's yet more evidence that the legal system is hopelessly corrupt.

Everyone capable of having a reasoned thought process around the subject will come to realize that the cost is pretty reasonable.

The cost may or may not be "reasonable", whatever that means, but "every reasonable person will agree with me (so anyone who disagrees with me is unreasonable and should thus be ignored)" is never a valid argument.

Re:That is cheap

[dave562]

Can you provide evidence of Facebook entering into contracts with anyone where they guaranteed 100% message delivery? If you can, by all means do. If not, STFU with your contempt of court and legal system ramblings. I will admit that they might have entered into some contracts when people setup Fan pages. I doubt it, their lawyers are pretty damn smart. Those guys at Kirkland & Ellis know what they are doing. So if such a contract exists, go ahead and put it up on Pastebin or something so that we can have an informed discussion about it.

We have been all over /. for years at this point discussing how Facebook users are the product, and Facebook is not really free. Now Facebook is beginning to monetize their product. Maybe Zuckerberg can start complaining about how Mark Cuban expects people to pay for tickets to see the Mavericks play. I mean really, that seems unreasonable. They can watch the game for "free" on television in any sports bar. How dare Cuban limit access to his team by extracting concessions from a market that has grown used to being able to watch basketball for free?!?!?!

Let's do a reasonableness check here.

Is it reasonable to expect someone to provide something to you for free forever? Is that reasonable? I think this one is pretty obvious, and anyone who thinks that it is, is very naive and has no grasp on business. Therefore they can be ignored. They might as well whine about a lack of pots of gold at the end of rainbows. Am I wrong? Are you going to honestly say that you will be honest and reasonable with yourself in calculating the cost of running Facebook, and from that reasoned thought process determine that it is reasonable to continue providing it for free, forever?

The second reasonableness check is the cost that Facebook is charging. This one is up for debate and the market will sort it out. My experience with marketing costs is that Facebook seems to be pretty well priced. I compare them to things like direct mail, automated phone calls, traditional promotions (promoters passing out flyers) and sites like Constant Contact. I am basing this on a single data point of one million guaranteed views for $3000.

Show me one other place where ANYBODY can BE GUARANTEED to reach one million people FOR FREE and will concede to you that Facebook is being unreasonable. Until then, I will start adding up the seconds that this post goes unanswered. I bet I will get to one million seconds before you find an example that satisfies the above criteria.

As for poisoning the well, give me a break. If anything, you're guilty of it. "I don't want to address what dave562 brought up, so he's poisoning the well by implying that people should use reason when considering the cost of Facebook advertising."

Re:That is cheap

[cusco]

I think you mean "Facebook owns 20,000 of my photos", whether you realize it or not. If their terms of service haven't changed since I read them a couple of years ago (my wife wanted me to sign up for FB so that she could play Farmville on my account) the photos become their property when you put them on their site, they can sell, give away or use them any way that they want, and you have forfeited all rights to post them anywhere else. In other words, if you leave and go to Google+ or HotNewWebSite.com you're not allowed to take your photos with you. Maybe they've changed that, but I doubt it. At least Google+ only claims to own the photo you put there, not every other copy everywhere.

Re:That is cheap

[bingoUV]

You are paying for Amazon

The argument from GP was that reducing probability of service does not matter as long as the probability is greater than zero.There was no mention of paying or non-paying.

Gmail is relaying your message to a few people

No. With IMAP and SMTP access you can run a simple script to send to millions. And irrelevant, because original argument was that reducing probability does not matter.

When you start paying for Facebook or Gmail starts handing out listserv access to everyone then you have a more accurate comparison.

No, just read the part of GP I responded to.

Re:That is cheap

[rtfa-troll]

Please look at the other posts. This problem affects both likes and friends above a certain level. That has to be true because otherwise people working for big companies would simply use friending as a method of getting the same delivery as a like. The change would be much more okay if it was only for likes, but then it would be useless.

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

The first; that this is a bait and switch operation,

No it's not. A bait-and-switch is advertising a product for some price and then when a customer comes you tell them the product is not available and you attempt to sell them something else. Changing a free service to being partially paid-for is not a bait-and-switch.

So facebook advertises a service for the price of 'free.99'. Mark Cuban comes along and facebook says the product is not available, but they *do* have the exact same product with almost the same features as the advertised service, and it costs $3,000.

By your own definition facebook is pulling a bait and switch.

Re:That is cheap

[Enderandrew]

Their front page.

"It's free and always will be."

Re:That is cheap

[Enderandrew]

This is where you are mistaken. FB only shows posts to a percentage of users. Haven't you heard people bitching about missing key updates from friends and family because they just don't show up? And that percentage seems to be going down all the time to the point that several companies are accusing FB of being broken on purpose to necessitate paying for posts for anyone to see them.

These aren't just wild accusations. They're backed up with metrics on reach for posts over time.

Re:That is cheap

[Enderandrew]

If FB is intentionally hiding those posts from fans who've opted into seeing them (precisely what people are accusing FB of because metrics have gone down so sharply at the same time FB is pushing for paid, promoted posts), then that is exactly bait and switch.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/11/is-facebook-broken-on-purpose-to-sell-promoted-posts/

Re:That is cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and now you can specifically track updates from those people. It's a different setting, but it doesn't cost a dime.

why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't seem that expensive....

The actual news here...

[InvisibleClergy]

...is that Facebook is actually having to deal with the consequences of their shady shenanigans!

Re:The actual news here...

[c0lo]

...is that Facebook is actually having to deal with the consequences of their shady shenanigans!

Somehow I don't believe FB has something like this in their minds. More probable: new shady shenanigans for cash.

Re:The actual news here...

[Cassius.Bilbao]

...is that Facebook is actually having to deal with the consequences of their shady shenanigans!

This! And Cuban (stating the obvious) summed it up nicely : "I Wouldn't Buy Facebook Stock"

Re:The actual news here...

[TheRaven64]

And Cuban (stating the obvious) summed it up nicely : "I Wouldn't Buy Facebook Stock"

Well, he wouldn't now: he bought a load at the IPO and lost money on it...

Cuban is bluffing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, MySpace?!

Re:Cuban is bluffing...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Seriously, MySpace?!

Dude, MySpace offered him a gigabyte of complementary bling .gifs for his page. That much ice is worth, like, ten zillion internet dollars.

Re:Cuban is bluffing...

[bfandreas]

Yes, but they do not give you rotating GIF green skulls and fancy "Under Construction" signs.
Too young for retro, too old for hip. It's like Justin Bieber in a zoot suit.

Re:Cuban is bluffing...

[mwvdlee]

Sure MySpace, why not?
If the reason for leaving Facebook is the cost of sending a message to all followers than MySpace's utter lack of users makes financial sense.

Not a bad deal

[Anonymous Coward]

1,000,000 users / $3000 = $0.003 per user

Re:Not a bad deal

[EMR]

1,000,000 users / $3000 = $0.003 per user

1,000,000 users / $3,000 = 333.333333333 users per dollar.

$3,000 / 1,000,000 users = $0.003 per user :-D

Re:Not a bad deal

[rockout]

You're off by a factor of 100, but still, 30 cents is pretty cheap.

Re:Not a bad deal

[PoolOfThought]

Check your calculator, rockout.

3000 dollars per 1,000,000 users = $3000 / 1000000 users = $0.003 dollars per user

It's super cheap, way cheaper than your "corrected" number. But that's not the point. The point is that brands expected to get the facebook service without additional costs beyond procuring of 'likes'. Cuban specifically stated that his companies spent significant money getting people to go to facebook and like the Mavs page. They ran promotions, they gave stuff away, the used up webpage realestate... all to get people to 'like' them on facebook. Facebook benefitted from this and I think it was a good thing for everyone. The mavs now had a way to reach out and touch someone, facebook had more users / more interaction within their own brand, and the users got whatever information they were wanting from the Mavs. Then facebook decided to start charging brands to reach the customers that these brands spent a lot of money to send to facebook in the first place!

Re:Not a bad deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

Re:Not a bad deal

[GuldKalle]

And now he goes to the next company, still not expecting to be screwed over.

Re:Not a bad deal

[PoolOfThought]

He might be a little wiser about it now, but I guarantee you if brands leave FB en masse those "other services" will be paying attention and they will handle things differently. Not necessarily better, but differently.

I think the takeaway here is that companies need to have a plan for revenue beforehand rather than after the fact. After the fact planning is pretty much going to force you to make some tough decisions that are going to really have an impact on how you're seen by your eventual customers. Either that, or they should work like hell on their method of delivering the bad news! I mean, seriously, Cuban seems to have found out about this when he wanted to send a message to his 'likers' and facebook tried to bill him on the spot with the "threat" that not everyone would receive his message if he didn't pay up. Come on! This change should have been implemented slowly... tell them they get 4 more free broadcasts this month and then it's going to cost some super small amount PER USER rather than a big freaking number with lots of zeros after it. The way they did it caused a NEGATIVE, EMOTIONAL reaction - not something you want from the customers you hope will be high dollar customers.

Low low price!

[zill]

MySpace will charge you $3,000 to reach all 10 people who are still using MySpace.

Re:Low low price!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

MySpace will charge you $3,000 to reach all 10 people who are still using MySpace.

Why pay that when I could just purchase a controlling interest in Myspace by digging between my couch cushions?

Re:Low low price!

[SumterLiving]

You are so wrong. We now have 14 users. Thanks, Justin T.

Re:Low low price!

[blade8086]

Maybe that's the plan. He is a media entrepreneur...

1) Whine about facebook and threaten to move to MySpace
2) Get a decent portion on NBA/MLB/NFL/Whatever team owners and other random media crap on board
3) Move teams, other crap over to new 'social network'
4) Float loan for purchase of new network against other random medai assets
5) Buy new 'social network'
6) Sell new social network when it peaks and before cycle repeats
7) Profit!!!

Re:Low low price!

[Nalez]

Now think of the advantage of paying $3K for 1m users on myspace. That would reach 4% of the myspace userbase (which is 25m users) instead of only .0000001% of the facebook userbase....

And nothing...

[Anonymous Coward]

... of value was lost.

But

[Anonymous Coward]

He has no quarems with his $60 million private plane that generates no ROI. But $3,000 that generates more revenue?! Outrageous!

Re:But

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

If you read further, he's upset that it seems like the price varies and is per post. He'd rather just pay a monthly fee and post as much as he wants.

Re:But

[TubeSteak]

He has no quarems with his $60 million private plane that generates no ROI.

A private plane doesn't have to generate revenue.
Commercial or private, air travel costs time and money.
If you can reduce travel time and turn it into working time, that can be enough to tip the cost:benefit ratio in favor of a private plane. /.ers make the exact same argument about IT every day:
It costs money, but it makes everyone more efficient, which generates revenue, which justifies the expense of IT.

Re:But

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is a foreign concept to a lot of people, but consider the possibility that he just likes the private plane. There's no ROI on fun. It's just fun. If I had as much money as Cuban, I'd probably own one too.

Re:But

[Anonymous Coward]

He has no quarems with his $60 million private plane

No, he doesn't. But then, nobody does, other than a few involved in commercial real estate. I have no qualms in telling you this.

Re:But

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is a quarem?

Re:But

[Legion303]

What the fuck is a "quarem"?

Re:But

[Angst Badger]

I think it must be some multiple of a quatloo.

Re:But

[Anonymous Coward]

qualm |kwä(l)m, kwô(l)m|
noun
an uneasy feeling of doubt, worry, or fear, esp. about one's own conduct; a misgiving: military regimes generally have no qualms about controlling the press.
a momentary faint or sick feeling.

Mark Cuban is a chump

[Anonymous Coward]

Has that guy ever produced anything of value? No, he has not.

Re:Mark Cuban is a chump

[Cassius.Bilbao]

Are you employed, sir?

Re:Mark Cuban is a chump

[Thud457]

Are you employed, sir?

DING! DING! DING!
You are Mr. Jeffrey Lebowski, I claim my Coke!

No. He helps administer the charities now, and I give him a reasonable allowance. He has no money of his own. I know how he likes to present himself; Father's weakness is vanity. Hence the slut.

Re:Mark Cuban is a chump

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Cuban got rich selling "tv.com" domain name to Yahoo for two billion dollars. He then bought a sports franchise. He has not and never will produce anything innovative or useful.

Re:Mark Cuban is a chump

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing true in that post is that he bought a sports franchise.

MySpace?

[hduff]

So the Mavs will be offering nude player pics and I-Pod playlists?

"FB Trying To Fight Spam"... yeah, sure.

[c0lo]

From TFA

Facebook constantly tinkers with EdgeRank to make it more effective, says product manager Will Cathcart. The algorithm change in September was a bigger change than usual, Cathcart says, but its goal was simply to cut down on spam in people's news feed.

FB: "Unless you pay for delivery, we'll be fighting your spam".

End result:
* the "network socialite" doesn't actually "socialize" anymore - it's advertising
* the others will still be served spam

Must be that FB is really desperate for revenue.

Re:"FB Trying To Fight Spam"... yeah, sure.

[gstoddart]

Of course, I find it amusing that FB is more than willing to inject ads into people's FB page ... so I can only assume those people are paying.

They're also likely getting met with "WTF is this crap doing on my Facebook page".

I'm kind of hoping Facebook really starts to piss off people and we see an end to this whole social media craze where everybody wants everything to work like Facebook. Even stuff internal to companies is moving in that direction, and it isn't as useful as the people pushing for it like to believe.

Re:"FB Trying To Fight Spam"... yeah, sure.

[cripkd]

Facebook doesn't inject ads into YOUR facebook page.
The newsfeed is not YOUR page, the PROFILE page is and they are not adding ads to that.
The newsfeed is just what it sais, a list of "news" from the sources you chose, kinda like choosing a tv channel and watching their news. Where they inject ads into your... time spent there.

Re:"FB Trying To Fight Spam"... yeah, sure.

[gstoddart]

The newsfeed is just what it sais, a list of "news" from the sources you chose

Except they've started injecting ads into the middle of the news feed from sources I didn't choose. Not in the side bar, but in the stream .. listed as "Sponsored" with a prominent "Like this page" button.

But, that's OK ... my experiment is deciding for myself if Facebook sucked or not is almost complete, and I'm coming down on the side of Facebook Sucks.

Re:"FB Trying To Fight Spam"... yeah, sure.

[doesnothingwell]

Spoiled rich guy wants a discount, a tiny seed of rebellion is now planted with the other rich guys. Egos to full inflation, after much masturbation nothing meaningful is accomplished because its Facebook. What the hell are Dallas Maverics anyway?

Re:"FB Trying To Fight Spam"... yeah, sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely. The end result for me is that now instead of seeing the posts I'm actually interested in from the people that I have "liked" and care about, I see a bunch of advertisements from places I have absolutely NO CONNECTION TO. Pretty much making Facebook useless for me. Not only are the brands that fund Facebook being pushed away by these practices, but the users are being alienated and devaluing the benefit of paying for these services.

Re:"FB Trying To Fight Spam"... yeah, sure.

[c0lo]

What the hell are Dallas Maverics anyway?

Texans, I imagine.

Re:"FB Trying To Fight Spam"... yeah, sure.

[aXis100]

In addition, I'm seeing a lot of adverts in my news feed (not the side bar) being promoted because my friends "liked" them, and when I talk to my friends they claim they never did. It's quite annoying.

Something quite bogus is going on.

Re:"FB Trying To Fight Spam"... yeah, sure.

[xhrit]

I only use facebook to cause drama. The site seriously sucks so hard at everything except making people irate. It is actually pretty good at that though.

Re:"FB Trying To Fight Spam"... yeah, sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also I now get to see paid postings from pages that my "friends" have liked. "Aunt McCrazy likes Batshit Medical Theory Movement" - related post!

For now you can hide the post, and then hide all from... but it makes it look like you're hiding posts from your friend.

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this news? Company A not happy with Company B's product/pricing, considers switching to Company C or maybe D. Happens a million times every day. Now, if several BIG companies would leave - not whine about it, actually leave -, that might constitute news. /. the next fail whale?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want better stories on slashdot, you can start by submitting some yourself.

Advertising rates

[Anonymous Coward]

A CPM of $3 is not all that outrageous, when you look at it from an advertising perspective. It is actually a fairly low price for targeted advertising. Other social networks offering greater reach at a lower price (i.e. free) is, in my opinion, an unmaintainable situation.

That being said, I don't really care. Social media advertising, and social networks for that matter, are a fucking sham.

Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[magic maverick]

I don't understand why companies and individuals with a "brand" are so willing to put that brand behind Facebook's. E.g. webcomic artists who say, "see this Facebook exclusive comic", or companies that have Facebook exclusive deals. They should be using Facebook to drive people towards their primary site, not use their primary site to drive people towards a third party who doesn't really care about them, and that may disappear within the year (or whenever a new website comes up).

So all these brands that are on Facebook and not pushing people off Facebook are doing it wrong.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[Billly Gates]

No one really wants to browse a corporate site unless they are applying for jobs.

I think $3,000 is a great deal for NBA fans who are looking for Maverick tickets. Same is true with selling custom merchandise. People like to read things that interest in them in their facebook unlike common disruptive advertising we do not give a shit about. If we didn't care we would not have liked it etc.

The facebook likes increase means you can market to a greater audience. If you people just went to your regular website then you couldn't (in your comic book example) advertise your new series as effectively. With Facebook & Youtube a few $5,000 here or there can generate $300,000 in return in more revenue. That is a great ROI if you ask me?

In addition, most people who are not poor have DVRs now and fastforward commercials. They see more advertsing on FB than TV.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one really wants to browse a corporate site unless they are applying for jobs.

True, but does anyone want to browse the corp's Facebook page?

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one really wants to browse a corporate site unless they are applying for jobs

That says more about the corporate sites than people's browsing preferences. For companies that already have a recognized brand, if they build it, people will come. If people don't come, then the site was badly designed for attracting people.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[hobarrera]

Because more "likes" makes the brand stand out more on facebook, and more users find it. Some of those users end up becoming more customers, which ends up in "more profit".

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong- potential customers spend hours perusing their fbook feeds, that's where you want your brand to be.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why companies and individuals with a "brand" are so willing to put that brand behind Facebook's. E.g. webcomic artists who say, "see this Facebook exclusive comic", or companies that have Facebook exclusive deals.

Easy:

1. Facebook sets up a "site" for them. As far as these people know, this is deep, dark, evil voodoo that mere mortals cannot possibly comprehend, and they're giving them a discussion area where they can say things to other people!!!!!1! And it's FREE!
2. Also as far as these people know, the entire world can be split into two groups: People who use Facebook and the unwashed inferiors who, after enough pestering, will use Facebook. Thus, they have an eventual advertising market of the entire world, with inconveniences only happening to the flawed individuals not yet on Facebook who, as just mentioned, are simply inferior human beings who deserve said inconveniences for not using Facebook.
3. Hey look how many friends and likes our brand has! It's a large number! :-D HAPPIES
4. These people are very, very stupid (or have no choice but to trust and follow the orders of a marketing department who is very, very stupid).

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[corychristison]

Facebook is a great 'buzz' generating tool... especially if you are willing to put some money into it.

Yes, drive the traffic to your site as many Corps do (a good example is 7-11 or Subway)... they offer contests and post them on their facebook pages and market the hell out of it (not just on facebook), in order to:
1) gather your information (through the contest signup) in the event Facebook does fall off the face of the planet and market research and
2) keep their brand on your mind

The customer thinks "Ooo! Free stuff! Must enter contest!" and the brand sits in the back of their mind... so after they hit the bong later and get the munchies, Subway or 7-11 comes to mind.

Mr. Cuban is doing something wrong.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[Thud457]

It's kind of creepy that some corp will give you stuff if you "friend" them.
Like that rich kid in school that nobody really actually likes.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[magic maverick]

Take comics. I'm visiting websites for these comics every day (or whenever I think a new comic is up, normally when notified by RSS). The best place for me to be notified about a new series, or hell, anything is on the website (linked to from the RSS feed). Hell, do what some of the artists do and just have a "comic" (in the same place as the regular comics) with text describing whatever it is. But want me to like you on Facebook so I can see an exclusive series? Not happening! Multiple reasons, including that I might not want to like my account with some of the weird shit I read, I might not want to let the weird authors have access to my info, and most importantly, I don't use Facebook at all .

And, as noted by someone else, if you've got a crap corporate website, maybe it's about time you made it better. If a sports team had regular highlights posted, special deals, regular commentary, and similar, then a fan probably will check back regularly. But maybe you need to distinguish between the boring shit (financial statements) and what people actually want to see. And maybe put all the boring shit into a subdir and link to it only from the footer (maybe hidden behind an about link).

Anyway, I think you aren't really addressing the points I was trying to make, which aren't so much about advertising, but about people pushing people towards Facebook (and other "social media") to the detriment of spaces they actually control and can brand without having third party brands dilute the primary brand.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[splitsevin]

Eyeballs my friend. Eyeballs.

Even though companies complain about ROI (which is a valid argument) it is still an extremely effective way of connecting to consumers. This is not going away any time soon. They are at ~450 million mobile users. Mobile commerce is exploding.

It's great to push people to your blog/website from Facebook but if it's mirroring your website's content you can connect with your users (read:customers) via 1 or 2 clicks instead of 12. You choose the 1 or 2-click method, always.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[DarkOx]

I totally get understand wanting generate likes on FB so that you get discovered more often and easily. That last part of the sentence though is the point, and I think the GP hit on it. You want to be discovered on FB, but your marketing effort should be to lead the user away from FB and back to your own home page as fast as possible.

You don't want users learning about you on FB where they might very well receive message not exactly in line with the ones you wanted to send. You want them on your site where you full control the message.

Second the one size fits all nature of FB is hardly a good user experience for delivering all types of content. Sure if you are roofing company or a daycare you can probably make it work as well as anything but If your in the entertainment business like the Mavericks are you really can probably put something together on your own site that is going to keep people their longer possibly ordering merchandise or buying tickets etc that is way more entertaining the anything you could do within the constraints of FB page. If you can't you have much deeper issuers.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[stephanruby]

They should be using Facebook to drive people towards their primary site, not use their primary site to drive people towards a third party who doesn't really care about them, and that may disappear within the year (or whenever a new website comes up).

So all these brands that are on Facebook and not pushing people off Facebook are doing it wrong.

Brands usually try pushing fans to use their own web site and opt-in into their mailing lists, but they just end up spamming them, so the fans unsubscribe, or they just don't end up subscribing in the first place. Besides, it's not like the fans are there just for the branded content, sometimes they're just looking for fellow fans to interact with and to talk about the game.

E.g. webcomic artists who say, "see this Facebook exclusive comic", or companies that have Facebook exclusive deals.

"Exclusivity" is a perk you give in exchange for free cross-promotion, discounts, or money. No one really ever wants to give exclusivity, especially on the web where it's so easy to publish something. It's just that if you give exclusivity, there usually is a very specific reason for it.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because on Facebook if someone likes them it shows up in all their friends news feeds, which means that their friends instantly hear about them too without having had to advertise to them directly.

Also since you and your friends will share a lot of interests, it manages to target a group of people who are slightly more likely to care about you than average.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook is where people go when they're bored. It's their one-stop-shop. When it was free, your brand HAD to be on Facebook. People were already there - if they wanted to find your brand and couldn't, then they might find your competitor's instead.

And it worked. Fans could easily post and connect with brands they liked. They could complain and brands would try to turn them back into customers. And brands could create "content" that fans would share and like and comment so it would reach more eyeballs.

In the beginning, this was worth the money, but competition has become fierce and Facebook is making it worse. Now not only do you have to pay people to create the content and people to approve the content, but Facebook has altered their algorithm so that you have to pay for people to see the content, too. It's becoming cost prohibitive.
 

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL keywords

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[blade8086]

Right. Because noone ever goes to a professional sports team website. Noone!

unless they are applying for jobs there

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[sootman]

> I don't understand why companies and individuals with a "brand"
> are so willing to put that brand behind Facebook's.

One. Seventh. Of. The. World's. Population.

> They should be using Facebook to drive people towards their
> primary site, not use their primary site to drive people towards
> a third party who doesn't really care about them,

The hosting is free and the audience is immense. Plus it has all the social stuff built-in, so one person can see your comic, and tell someone else, and they tell someone else...

> and that may disappear within the year (or whenever a new
> website comes up).

Oh no! And then you'll dry up and blow away and you can never publish on the Internet again! Oh, wait, that's exactly not how it works. Just re-launch somewhere else. Even if FB declines, it won't be overnight. You'll have plenty of time to transition. And if they did literally disappear one day, millions of others would be in the same boat and would look for the next big thing. Once you see where everyone is going, you go there too.

You don't get attention by yelling in the middle of an empty field. You go where the people are. Facebook is where the people are.

Re:Why do companies use FaceBook anyway?

[SeaFox]

I don't understand why companies and individuals with a "brand" are so willing to put that brand behind Facebook's. E.g. webcomic artists who say, "see this Facebook exclusive comic", or companies that have Facebook exclusive deals.

Not to mention they alienate themselves from fans/customers that don't use Facebook. Telling me I have to go to Facebook for this or that isn't going to make me get a Facebook account if I don't have one already.

I think he's confused

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's confused over the dynamics at work here. The fans aren't on Facebook because the Mavericks are there, the Mavericks are there because that's where the fans are. Moving to another service isn't really an option.

CPM

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how deep Mark usually gets on the ad buying level, $3,000 for 1,000,000 impressions is just a little over a $3CPM, which is pretty much the industry rate.

what ever happened to hosting your own site?

[Nadaka]

Then he would be beholden to no one (except maybe google).

Re:what ever happened to hosting your own site?

[tgd]

Then he would be beholden to no one (except maybe google).

A billion users on Facebook happened.

Re:what ever happened to hosting your own site?

[Cassius.Bilbao]

The infastructure needed to host your own site (to any meaningful degree) is a major detractor. Plus the genuine risk of getting flooded or worse, especially these days, makes a free website with much of your community already in place is a big plus for them.

PIPA and SOPA may not go far, but censorship is already here because most people like to hang out in only a handful of places.

It's going to be like the rail industry in the old days. Only a few sites will control access to destinations.

Re:what ever happened to hosting your own site?

[Anonymous Coward]

A billion users on Facebook happened.

But 950,000,000 of those are fake and 49,000,000 of the rest haven't logged in for six months.

Facebook is just so 2010.

Re:what ever happened to hosting your own site?

[SeaFox]

A billion users on Facebook happened.

An independent site can be visited by anyone with Internet access. This group will always be larger than Facebook's membership. Much larger.
Why limit yourself?

Re:what ever happened to hosting your own site?

[perryizgr8]

An independent site CAN be visited by anyone with Internet access. facebook IS visited by a billion unique people each month. a huge difference.

Re:what ever happened to hosting your own site?

[Legion303]

A billion accounts on Facebook happened.

FTFY.

Re:what ever happened to hosting your own site?

[tgd]

A billion accounts on Facebook happened.

FTFY.

No, my original wording was both deliberate and accurate.

Everyone goes where their products are?

[FictionPimp]

So Mr. Cuban thinks that if he goes to myspace his fan base will follow? Somehow I doubt it. The reason he is on facebook is because his fan base was on facebook, not the other way around.

Re:Everyone goes where their products are?

[tftp]

So Mr. Cuban thinks that if he goes to myspace his fan base will follow? Somehow I doubt it.

I'm not a member of anyone's fan base. However if I were, I would easily open a free account with yet another social network to keep track of what's happening with my precious.

This would be doubly so if the orders to switch come direct from my Gods (such as the people who I am a fan of.) Besides, what fans are pressed for time and cannot be bothered to register at a web site?

Block it at the firewall

[Anonymous Coward]

It is easy to block Facebook at the firewall. It also gets rid of the dozens of trackers embedded in all kinds of surprising pages.

Dirt cheap.

[westlake]

He is complaining about a $3,000 media buy that reaches a targeted audience of 1 million?

Re:Dirt cheap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree. I don't even have a facebook account (or a slashdot account, for that matter), but 0.3 cents per recipient is much less than the USPS is charging and probably much more effective as well. What's best is the facebook is opt-in: those messages are actually desired. Isn't that an advertiser's dream?

Control your brand

[Minter92]

Here's a crazy idea. Instead of letting a third party, that sees you only as a money source, control your brand. Make your own site and control your brand. I really don't get companies using facebook at all.

Re:Control your brand

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that's where the potential customers are. It's more productive to put an ad in a shopping mall than in a forest.

Re:Control your brand

[Billly Gates]

Also the case of outsourcing here makes sense.

Not in looking for worse workers for cheaper prices, but rather use someones speciality.

FB knows marketing and advertising and will do that for you so you can focus on managing your sports franchise. For that tiny price you hit a mass market that you could not do yoruself unless you run expensive TV ads, which again is outsourcing to the TV industry etc.

Re:Control your brand

[Anonymous Coward]

Dial down the Facebook love.
I've lost track of how many impassioned responses you've made in defense of Facebook.

Re:Control your brand

[tompaulco]

Because that's where the potential customers are. It's more productive to put an ad in a shopping mall than in a forest.
I would also think it would be more effective and cheaper to advertise on your own site. If I want to go buy a Dell, I think "I will go to Dell.com", not "I will go to Dell's facebook page".

Re:Control your brand

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's more productive to put an ad in a shopping mall than in a forest.

But if every brand puts every ad in the mall, they've basically recreated the whole forest in the mall.

Oh I Remember How This One Ends!

[eldavojohn]

The social network wanted to charge him $3,000 to reach 1 million people.

McBean I mean, Zuckerburg walks away with all the money from the Star Bellied Sneetches!

Three-thousandths of a cent?

[Anonymous Coward]

3,000 / 1,000,000 = 0.003 per person.

That's the price to reach someone who isn't already following the Mavs on Facebook.

Since Mark took Yahoo for 9 billion when he sold broadcast.com to them, maybe he's especially cognizant of being overcharged himself for something that may not be worth the price.

Re:Three-thousandths of a cent?

[3dr]

Using units, that's $3000 / 1e6 people = $3 / 1000 people = $0.003 / person = 0.3 cents / person.

So no, not three thousandths of a cent, but 300 thousandths of a cent.

But, whatever. I'm surprised to hear him complain of a price like this, considering running a TV ad, or a mailing will be at least 25 cents/person.

Re:Three-thousandths of a cent?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

If I understand the story correctly, thats the price to land a post on person's page if they are already liking the Mavs. It doesn't get them more likes.

I don't think this is going to work...

[fredmosby]

I don't go to Facebook to see advertisements. So obviously I'm not going to switch to a different service to see his ads.

Re:I don't think this is going to work...

[Symbha]

You might switch to another platform to see the news and information that you signed up to see, but are no longer getting from your platform. These are not 'ads' they are something else.

I think something is missing here...

[coastal984]

Forgive me if I'm incorrect here... But Facebook isn't trying to charge him to post on his page with 1 million fans; Facebook is trying to charge him for "promoting" [read: advertising] his post more prominently in peoples timelines and around the site. I don't have a problem with this. You let Facebook's news feed dynamic work for free just like everyone else, your you pay up to reach others. Why is he pitching such a hissy fit over advertising not being free?

Re:I think something is missing here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is he pitching such a hissy fit over advertising not being free?

Because the hissy fit is free advertising for him? After all, he made it to the Slashdot front page. He wouldn't if he just paid the $3000 to facebook.

Re:I think something is missing here...

[buchalka]

Forgive me if I'm incorrect here... But Facebook isn't trying to charge him to post on his page with 1 million fans; Facebook is trying to charge him for "promoting" [read: advertising] his post more prominently in peoples timelines and around the site.

I don't have a problem with this. You let Facebook's news feed dynamic work for free just like everyone else, your you pay up to reach others. Why is he pitching such a hissy fit over advertising not being free?

Facebook are now charging you to get access to your own fans per post, this is not extra advertising. Whenever you post something on facebook only a small subset will get your content injected into their news feed unless you cough up the extra money so that more/all of them see it.

This is something they only added a few months ago. They want to charge this every time you post as well.

So I don't blame him for getting a bit upset at least here as this is something that facebook have taken away e.g. it was free and now they charge for it. To be fair though, they never gave you 100% coverage of your posts into fans feeds before, but now it's a really low "free" coverage and you have to pay to get the vast majority of people who are already following you to see your content.

Re:I think something is missing here...

[cripkd]

Are you sure you don't mean that facebook will ask for money so that your post stays longer and higher on people's newsfeed?
So now my posts won't reach all my 150 friends you're saying? Is this documented somewhere?

Re:I think something is missing here...

[buchalka]

Are you sure you don't mean that facebook will ask for money so that your post stays longer and higher on people's newsfeed?
So now my posts won't reach all my 150 friends you're saying? Is this documented somewhere?

This applies to pages e.g. fan pages that you have Liked and followed. When someone posts something to a fan page, everyone who is following that page does not automatically get the content in their newsfeed. You can see this if you have a page as it shows you the coverage. Facebook give you an option to "pay for more coverage" e.g. let more people already following you see your content.

For your own posts to your friends I am not sure about that. I believe they might all get it. Not 100% sure.

Cheers

Tim

Re:I think something is missing here...

[RanCossack]

Oh, wow. I was wondering why my news feed suddenly had less spam; the guiding hand of the free market was keeping it away! Thanks, capitalis--

This seems really strange. "Yes! I am the product, so they have to pay for it."

Re:I think something is missing here...

[cripkd]

I always thought that the Get More Coverage option meant that people that have NOT subscribed to my page will get my post, as an ADVERTISEMENT, based on some algorithm where at least they target people with that interest (as my page).

Re:I think something is missing here...

[buchalka]

I always thought that the Get More Coverage option meant that people that have NOT subscribed to my page will get my post, as an ADVERTISEMENT, based on some algorithm where at least they target people with that interest (as my page).

It possibly might have meant that in the past. But I do know that the relatively new features facebook have added prevent people with facebook pages from getting their content out to all people following them unless they pay extra. I think they may be working on adding exceptions to this (possibly for non profit organisations, etc).

Note also there is a separate advertising program that marketers can use to target people with interests, etc (you can target by interest, by people who have liked a particular page [yours or someone else's], etc. I'm not talking about that program at all. Rather, I am talking about your own content being send to people already following you (having liked your page).

Interesting times to see if they are just going to upset their userbase.

"starting with mine"

[roc97007]

Starting?

Aww, can't spam 15% of the species for free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should keep the spam down on Facebook.

I see whatcha' doin' there, Facebook!

[cripkd]

EdgeRank, really? To determine what posts reach which users? So you change 2 letters and you're trying to position yourself as a tech company that uses algorithms to better serve your users?

On the other hand either Cuban is overreacting or I'm missing something.
Facebook didn't "asked" for $3000 so that he can message 1mil friends. Facebook proposed that he paid $3000 so that his posts can sit higher on people's newsfeeds, for longer and maybe for people not even on his list. He could have said no and just posted to his 715,237 (I checked) subscribers. Each method has it's ups and downs, the one facebook proposed was just going to be, well, promoted more (with a small text next to it saying "Advertising" or something. ).

Re:I see whatcha' doin' there, Facebook!

[RKThoadan]

It's more than just the newsfeed. I have the newsfeed disabled by browser plugins and always keep my main page sorted by "most recent" but I still don't get all posts from some people/pages that I like. I check several of their walls directly because I genuinely don't want to miss anything they post.

I do not "like" anything or anyone if I don't want to see everything they post and facebook has royally pissed me off because they think they get to decide what I really like.

As a side note it also ticks me off that facebook keeps trying to change my sort to "Top Stories" but it's almost always immediately obvious when that happens and I always switch it back.

Re:I see whatcha' doin' there, Facebook!

[perryizgr8]

you can change your settings to show 'all updates' if you dont wanna miss anything.

"primary" site on facebook?

[Heebie]

How stupid are you in the first place? Your primary "site".. your primary online presence.. should be YOUR OWN WEBSITE. This has been a marketing no-brainer since the mid 1990's. DUH.

Re:"primary" site on facebook?

[xeno314]

Yep, if there's one thing that was clear in the mid-1990s, it was how online marketing worked. (I just spent some time with archive.org - it was pretty amusing.)

Bigger problem for the little guy

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be one thing if Facebook was trying to extract some money from the large corporations using Facebook to freely promote their brand. But it's a much bigger problem than that. I was first made aware of this when a friend of mine who is a local musician started hearing from his fans that they weren't getting some of his posts. He relies on his Facebook page to let people know when and where he is playing next. Like most people he assumed that anyone who Liked his fan page would get his posts. Now Facebook is trying to shake him down every time he makes a post. The thing is, his page only has a couple of hundred Likes. This isn't advertising. I'm perfectly okay with paying to reach new potential customers/fans but just to post to your timeline? Ridiculous!

Re:Bigger problem for the little guy

[DCFusor]

Back in the day, my band just got its own site. We gave away crap quality mp3's of our stuff, posted our gig schedules, and told people that if they wanted the good quality, they needed to send us money. We didn't "push" spam out to people, though that's also trivial with your email account and a simple list. Gheesh, it's not like it's all that expensive to just have your own site, and if they are fans, they probably prefer to visit when *they* feel like it, rather than get "spam announcements/ads" from you anyway. It worked well enough for us to pay off a couple of mortgages.

Re:Bigger problem for the little guy

[gander666]

This. I do a lot of volunteer work for a local nonprofit (we rescue greyhounds off the track and work their transition into couch potatoes). Facebook used to be our best channel to attract volunteers and potential adopters. But about 6 months ago they started this. If you don't pay to "promote" your post only a small fraction of the people who like or follow your page will see an entry in their timeline. Granted with only a few hundred likes, the cost to promote is only like $6.00. But we post 4 - 5 times a day, every day. We can't afford their promotion and it has really hurt our outreach efforts.

I know Facebook needs to monetize, and that their great hope is advertising, but this isn't advertising, and it is greatly reducing the value of their interconnected community.

Re:Bigger problem for the little guy

[Legion303]

"Back in the day, my band just got its own site. We gave away crap quality mp3's [...]"

Get off my lawn.

Boo fucking hoo

[Rix]

Commercial users are being expected to pay extraordinarily low commercial rates. Someone call the Wambulance.

Re:Boo fucking hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

$3000 to reach a million people genuinely interesting in your product is insanely cheap.

"Genius" takes all forms

[gavron]

Mark Cuban has been at the right place at the right time for lots of things, including Real Networks.

He's also missed the boat on several, but can afford to do so, as he's shown with HDnet and the Dallas Mavericks.
[Don't get me wrong, I love NBA basketball, just that his "investments" in both are duds.]

Now he wants to move his properties from the hottest sites on the web to the hottest sites of 2003.
I wish him well, and perhaps he and his influence can bring Myspace back into meaningful-land.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING that you'd think a successful businessman like Mark Cuban would
realize is that Facebook *DOES* charge $3,000 because they *CAN* charge $3,000 because they
*DO* provide a value for it.

Best wishes to Captain Dunsel.

Ehud

Facebook snake oil

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, facebook is overvalued
Yes, facebook does not have a real growth model
Yes, facebook is just another website

No it is not the holy grail for big data

Takei

[Jerslan]

George Takei has made similar posts. Facebook wants to charge him for the amusing lolcats and whatever else he posts. When he posts about his book? Yeah, then it makes sense to charge him, but for the other stuff? Not so much.

His current solution was to tell everyone to add his page to their "interests" and then you start seeing his posts in your news-feed again.

Article about both Cuban and Takei's frustrations

As a Consumer, I hate the new "promted post"

[Anonymous Coward]

I follow brands on facebook I want to keep in touch with. With the new promoted posts, only a small set of fans get to see the news updates. I have to go to each fan page individually to see posts.

I noticed this when I was waiting for the Warrior Dash to post when the photos would eb ready. I found out they did post, I just wasn't included with facebook's choice of fans. As a consumer, this frustrates me and I'm ready for someone else to take over in the social media world.

Re:As a Consumer, I hate the new "promted post"

[HeckRuler]

You self-identify as "a consumer".
You "follow brands" on facebook.

Please kindly go die in a fire. (You can run all the way there if you want).

Re:As a Consumer, I hate the new "promted post"

[TapeCutter]

He's paying for your post, why would you want him to "die in a fire"

Re:As a Consumer, I hate the new "promted post"

[blade8086]

here here

Re:As a Consumer, I hate the new "promted post"

[HeckRuler]

Because I detest the consumer-culture. The passively consuming brain-dead herd arguing that Coke is better than Pepsi seems like a barren wasteland of cultural significance. There's no soul there. It's subverting the worth of word-of-mouth advertising. Any sort of producer/maker/business that manages "brands" is too damn big for my tastes. They buy and sell popularity like it's a commodity rather than something they earn through making quality products. They want that free advertising, and I see no reason to give it to them.

"Paying for my post"? Dude, you don't thank the alcoholic at the bar for keeping it afloat. (And if you do, it's an ironic sort of gallows humor which makes you an ass). Now don't get me wrong, I'm a raging hypocrite here. I enjoy my soda of choice even though they sink a lot of money into advertising and steering their brand. And I have eaten at those chain restaurants that serve overpriced food with all the shit on the walls. I've bought a lot of stuff from ThinkGeek (back when that supported Slashdot). So me, right here, I'm supporting the very brands I'm rallying against. But I wish they'd fire their whole marketing division and cut $0.05 off the final cost to me.

In short, fuck marketers. And fuck the people who swallow their shit and ask for seconds.

Myspace...

[YesDinosaursDidExist]

"New Myspace" -- Pass....

so let me get this straight. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . Cuban has a state-sanctioned MONOPOLY on Dallas sports entertainment, raking in money hand over fist at TAXPAYER EXPENSE. And he's bitching because Facebook is a de-facto monopoly, and is putting the squeeze on him? Cry me a river.

Re:so let me get this straight. . .

[oh_my_080980980]

So you prefer one monopoly to another...nice....

Keeping out spam

[omnichad]

This is a good thing. If it's more expensive than other options, then Facebook won't be too ad-riddled for a couple years yet.

Re:Keeping out spam

[coolmadsi]

This is a good thing. If it's more expensive than other options, then Facebook won't be too ad-riddled for a couple years yet.

The Android app for Facebook is getting there as there are a lot of "Promoted" posts for things I have no interest in (but perhaps one or two of my friends do)

Wait...

[oh_my_080980980]

People pay for things on Facebook? Who knew....course this new strategy by Facebook might have something to do with their stock and trying to prove to investors that can actually generate revenue...

MySpace!

[Arancaytar]

Good one.

Facebook - Snore; Mark Cuban - Snore

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Who cares. NEXT.

Advertisers need reduce inventory

[JSBiff]

The problem with advertising is, there's just too much. The more there is, the less value it has. To illustrate, what do you think had more advertising impact. . . back when television shows were sponsored by one sponsor, and you heard three ads per hour, all for the same sponsor, or nowadays when there's a five minute commercial break and you go to the bathroom or the kitchen, or browse facebook, and ignore the ads?

Similarly with online advertising, there's so much of it, none of it makes hardly any impression on me at all. I just tune it out, scan past it with my eyes, or block it with ad block to begin with so never see it.

Any expense is against the point

[orthancstone]

The "why not" is simple: Because they aren't posting this information as advertising. They are trying to keep their users informed (you know, users who actively sought out such information by "Like"ing the Mavs FB page in the first place) and FB is trying to force them to pay for reaching all of those folks that wanted the information. If they don't pay, only a small percentage will see the post by default (while the rest will just have to navigate to the FB page in question) despite the fact that all of the users wanted to see it.

Re:Any expense is against the point

[orthancstone]

Although his suggestion of a, "pay this default price and everyone sees it," implies that he's willing to play the money game if FB could get their act together. So expense isn't really his issue in the first place, just the actual model.

Re:Any expense is against the point

[NumenMaster]

I'm not a facebook user so this is new to me. So you're saying, for the mass majority of facebook users this isn't a subject that crosses their path. This story is for those with large media markets who utilize facebook as part of their business scheme. And so, Cuban leaves a message on his facebook page and only a few people will see it without going to the team page? Otherwise, the rest would have to go to the facebook page on a daily basis to see updates? If a normal person leaves a message on their page, who see's it without going to their page? Their 'friends?' Forgive the ignorance.

blasphemer!

[Anonymous Coward]

this is slashdot, the only correct way to block facebook is by protecting the purity of your simultaneous-4-way symetrical HOSTS file. And APK is its prophet, blessings be upon him.

Mark Cuban-Celebrity Spokesman

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Mark, Sign yourself up as a celebrity spokesman for some more crappy products to pay your $3K facebook bill. Not to be rude, but anything your selling, I'm not buying.

"The big negative for professional sports...

[seandiggity]

...is that we will no longer push for fans or viewers because most of them can't afford to watch. Why would we invest in extending our fanbase if we have to lower ticket prices or get rid of exclusive broadcasts? That's crazy."

Sorry, I must have read the article a bit...differently.

Right

[matunos]

And Dish was gonna drop AMC.

Empty threat...

[superdave80]

The Mavs are considering moving to Tumblr or to new MySpace as primary site.

MySpace? Why don't you just threaten to setup your own geocities website while you're at it? It'll have about the same impact.

Isn't AdBlock supposed to filter such ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't use FB, so pardon is my question doesn't make sense, but I run AdBlock and I haven't seen online ads for years.

So aren't they supposed to be filtered out?
Or these ad campaigns target people who are so ignorant they never heard of such thing?
Or FB somehow tricks AdBlock?

Re:Isn't AdBlock supposed to filter such ads?

[perryizgr8]

adblock would have to block the entire facebook website to block these ads.

Re:Isn't AdBlock supposed to filter such ads?

[SgtChaireBourne]

adblock would have to block the entire facebook website to block these ads.

Another way to block the entire Facebook site is to do it at the firewall. Facebook has trackers, not just ads, present in a great many pages. The way to get them all is to get them at the firewall.

Cuban's other take...

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from being stuck with $3K fees, he lost big time from FB's IPO.

It sucks when you have cash burning a pocket in your pants, but Cuban is basically saying:
a. FB's IPO said FB was going to allow advertisers make a killing on their customers (e.g. increase customer base 10x)
b. FB was touted as the future of advertising by the Valley and its VCs
c. Cuban wanted IN, and wanted an IMMEDIATE ROI. Being the biggest IPO in history to date, I would have made the same conclusion--- immediate ROI.

Instead, Cuban (and others) lost big time, the stock tanked, and now he's paying the same rates as with traditional media.

And on a show he was right on one thing:
Youtube or FB's 3million hits is NOTHING compared to 7million viewers watching a show on TV.

I Think Mr. Cuban wants to advertise for free

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that's basically what he's asking. I know how it is to advertise on facebook, I've done it a lot and I still do. He's basically saying that he's tired that facebook is charging for ad-space to reach new audiences. I know, it sounds ridiculous to charge for ad-space and I'd be butthurt too if I had to pay 3cents per user... Oh wait! I'd be very excited if that were the case because sites like Google will easily charge around 40cents per user and that's for an unpopular keyword.

Re:I Think Mr. Cuban wants to advertise for free

[gl4ss]

He wants to have an electronic maillist service for free.
That's really not that much to ask.

that money, 3000 per update.. would quite fast pay for their social media employees salary.

hell, have you thought about what kind of hosting you can have for 3000 /month??

Mark Cuban is a great example of this study.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/11/13/191217/study-claims-human-intelligence-peaked-two-to-six-millennia-ago

It did not takes long for Dr. Crabtree proves he is dead right.

Mark Cuban picks My Space as an alternative. WTF?! My Space? LOL

It's a bit old school but...

[NumenMaster]

What ever happened to email?

Re:It's a bit old school but...

[dnahelicase]

What ever happened to email?

It would probably cost a lot more to collect a million emails, maintain compliance with mass mailings, and pay someone to manage it all. Plus it would eventually end in spam anyway.

The problem is that a million people don't want to see this information. If they did he could ask them for their information, and if he had something valuable to say it would be worth it.

He doesn't want someone to pay for shooting information to his target audience at his whim, regardless of whether or not they want to see it. "Liking" something is not enough. The real fans will check the MAVS page, the casual people aren't that interested.

If it was really important, it would be worth the half-million it would cost to actually mail everyone his message.

Cheap bastards figure out social media is not free

[Ice Station Zebra]

Color me shocked. Really, rich people suck when they don't want to pay taxes and they don't want to pay for infrastrucure that they use and someone else has payed for. I think we need a French solution to this problem.

'Bout Time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the next round begin!

Excellent! One less spammer on facebook!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that it I care because I use AdBlock...

qualms

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

start his own

[hey]

If a guy like Cuban can throw his weight behind a social network PROTOCOL then nobody would be beholden to Facebook Corp.

I don't recall the last time FB offered me that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm... when was the last time Facebook offered to let me talk to $1M people for $3000. Hmmmm...

Oh wait. I forgot Mark Cuban is a tool and he is used to things going his way. Good luck with that move to myspace.

Barrier-to-entry

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually a good thing because this introduces a barrier to entry. If it cost nothing to spam up a message to X billion people then Facebook would very quickly become totally useless...it would degenerate into a sea of advertising, political agendas and product placement with no actual usable function. Your puppy pictures would get lost in piles of penis enlargement and weight-loss pills.

Kinda like cable TV.

"Escape from Facebook" the book

[Anonymous Coward]

This new book is about this topic www.escapefromfacebook.com

There was this thing.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

There was this thing once. I can't remember the right words for it, but it worked kind of like this:

- companies maintained an online presense
- people who wanted notifications from those companies would submit some kind of identifying information - like a unique address that was a good way to reach them online.
- companies would send out notifications to those unique addresses, in accordance with people's wishes.

Man, those days must have been *hard* - imagine, having to send a message to each of those million people individually! Oh, no - wait, I seem to recall that it could be done in bulk, at a cost that was marginal-to-nonexistent.

Well anyway, still - keeping a list of those people must be *hard*. Thank goodness we have Facebook! Now we can "reach" a random subset of those people interested in our communications for only a small premium of several thousand dollars each time!

Negotions 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not marketing, its all about negotiations. Mark is showing that the most important rule is being able to simply walk away from the table and say no.

Good job Mark!

Seriously Facebook should be paying Mark for landing his brand there.

Use Facebook. Goto Jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook user avoids jail over April Jones comments

Judge jails woman who refused to delete Facebook account.

London riots: Jail for Facebook user who wanted riots in Cardiff ...

Selena Gomez's Facebook account hacker jailed for one year ...

After hacking into the Facebook account of Justin Bieber's girlfriend, and accessing private messages, a 21-year-old British man is jailed.

  Magistrates in Worcester opted not to jail Sam Busby, from St John's, Worcester, despite being told that another Facebook user was locked up ...

Facebook's "like" may land Filipinos in jail

too bad it's not anyone else

[slashmydots]

It only takes 1 big push to cause a mass exodus from Facebook. The timeline thing, every other UI change, hacks, spyware-serving apps, constant requests for money, privacy nightmares, and a horrible user interface already have users steaming. One gigantic entity leaving and telling everyone else to could do it for Facebook and it'd crash at MySpace speeds. Of course, since it's Mark Cuban, this isn't it.

How cheap is Mark Cuban?

[ALeader71]

$3K to reach 1M people? I know it's a drag Marky but you can afford it. How much do you spend on other forms of advertising? Seriously, who uses MySpace and tumblr? If you shifted to Twitter I might believe you. GM made a better move in dropping a paid-for FB page for a free page where people could post and submit "likes."

I'm predicting Mark Cuban modifies is strategy again.

Re:How cheap is Mark Cuban?

[gl4ss]

it's per post. so if they're communicating like say a typical rockband on tour then it would be 50 000 /week.

it's a lot of cash just for sending bulletins to people who signed up.

Welcome to the world of advertising

[nomaddamon]

This makes sense.. really...
If I'm a true fan, I have liked the page and am liking a lot of updates from the page... therefore FB sees that I am interested in the content provided by the page and i get 100% of hes updates
If i have liked the page by accident (or just don't really care about what it has to say), then i don't "like" the updates of the page and soon enough i will stop getting them... (except for really popular ones)
So if I'm not getting the updates, i DON'T CARE about them and its perfectly fair for FB to charge him for spamming my news-feed.
I understand that he has invested in advertising but hes got the return from that... a lot of users who liked the page and got temporary exposure to he brand.. expecting this to go on forever is like expecting that if you publish a TV ad, then every person who has seen one of your ad's is committed to see all your other adds (multiple a day) for the rest of eternity....
Also he forgets to mention that by doing a sponsored post, he will get exposure to users who have not yet liked hes page...

The problem isn't Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that even people in advertising have to admit that there is almost no research to back which means of advertising gets the best response. Facebook is just now trying to monetize the not yet disproven effectiveness of the medium.

In the end it's still a crap shoot.

Dash

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't be switching to app.net an option ?
If you want to inform your community it's not SPAM and thus part of the game. Benefit for the user are clients with no adds... well, the drawback is a subscription fee.

Dotcomsecrets X - Internet Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Dotcomsecrets X - Internet Marketing Coaching Program: http://bit.ly/Y6qlgp online ,1$ today for 30 days