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An Internal Note Shows Facebook Learned a Way To Target High Schoolers Through a Viral Polling App It Acquired Last Year: Report (buzzfeednews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the leaving-no-stones-unturned dept.

Facebook bought TBH last October and eventually shut it down, but an internal note, obtained by BuzzFeed News, shows that the company learned a way to target high schoolers through the viral polling app. From a report: When Facebook purchased TBH last October it got more than just a viral polling app that amassed 2.5 million daily users, mostly teens, a few months after launch. The social network also acquired a carefully honed growth strategy targeted toward high school kids. An internal document from Facebook, obtained by BuzzFeed News, shows TBH's leadership explaining a well-tested method the startup used to attract teens at individual high schools to download its app. The note provides a window into Facebook's growth-at-any-costs mentality and the company's efforts to keep a key demographic engaged as its popularity among teens declines and it simultaneously runs out of people in the connected world to bring to its platform. In the confidential memo, TBH's founders told their new colleagues of "a psychological trick" that they employed to acquire teenage users en masse -- a combination of scraping Instagram for high schoolers' accounts, playing to youthful curiosity, and taking advantage of class dismissal hours.

22 comments

  1. Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck the Zuck!

    1. Re: Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He made his money by being right about people.

    2. Re: Obligatory by ole_timer · · Score: 1

      which says something about those that opened an account or two...

      --
      nothing to see here - move along
    3. Re: Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or websites that have bowed the knee - scroll down on THIS page.
      FB is a disease and needs to be surgically removed along with its financial supporters.

    4. Re: Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh noes, he's figured out the kids are more likely to see a poll when they're not in class!
      SO EVUL

  2. To be clear... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Facebook targets everybody with psychological tricks to get them to fork over personal data for FB's profit. Not just high schoolers.

    Sadly, we live in a world where most people are susceptible to such manipulations of their behaviours.. Can that ever be fixed? I don't know. I suspect not: human nature is what it is. A small number think, a small number can't, and a very large number could but don't. So it has always been, so it shall always be.

    1. Re:To be clear... by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      Sadly, we live in a world where most people are susceptible to such manipulations of their behaviours

      All people are vulnerable to such manipulations. Just not everyone is vulnerable to the same ones.

      Except me of course. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to buy tickets to wait in line for 3 hours to listen to an actor give me a live commercial for a movie I already bought tickets for when it was announced.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    2. Re:To be clear... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All people are vulnerable to such manipulations

      Maybe but you can always try to kick all such influencers out of your life. I say try because it can never be perfect, but I believe you can get to the 98% point without too much burden.

  3. It took an acquisition? by aaronb1138 · · Score: 2

    Targeting a school at a time shouldn't have required acquiring another company to learn "this one neat trick". This is how advertisers and vendors have operated for decades towards high schools.

    This is just more evidence of how tone deaf Silicon Valley and especially Facebook are to general social skills, just as they are towards privacy. Hell, the whole approach sounds like Marketing 101 case study examples. But gaining such knowledge requires studying and picking up a book.

    1. Re:It took an acquisition? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The best ideas are the ones that, after hearing, you say "I could have thought of that".

  4. I Hate Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Facebook is, time and time and time again, pure evil.

  5. FB wins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The race to the bottom.

  6. You Know Who Else Targets High Schoolers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pedophiles.

    Coincidence? I think not.

    1. Re: You Know Who Else Targets High Schoolers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Pedophiles

      They like people with breasts? That word doesn't mean what you think it does.

      Try 'ephebophiles' but that doesn't invoke 'think of the children' hysteria.

    2. Re: You Know Who Else Targets High Schoolers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pedophilia, or paedophilia, is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children.

      Ephebophilia is the primary sexual interest in mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19. The term was originally used in the late 19th to mid 20th century.

  7. oblig by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1. target high schoolers
    2. tell them to upload their nudes so they "can't be shared"
    3. ???
    4. profit

  8. Evil, simply put by charliemerritt03 · · Score: 1

    I don't care how many $$ Zuk can get using this-- it is EVIL. Go to Hell EVIL. Got enough bucks to get out of that?

    1. Re: Evil, simply put by LordWabbit2 · · Score: 1

      Got enough bucks to get out of that?

      Yes, yes he does, because you can buy absolution.

      --
      There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
  9. That seems a stretch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "growth-at-any-costs mentality"

    That really doesn't seem to hold up to daylight, though. Facebook doesn't seem to have a growth-at-any-costs mentality. They just announced tools to help users limit their screen time, as one easy example.

  10. if u dont kno by MJhasHIV · · Score: 1

    facebook is a joke.

  11. Target high-schoolers... by 6Yankee · · Score: 1

    ...with this one weird trick!

  12. Polling and quizzes? by Daralantan · · Score: 1

    Wasn't that pretty much how Buzzfeed got it's start? Dumb quizzes, top 10s, and tons and tons of content straight up copied from other sites?

    Supposedly their news is decent. But I refuse to go to their site in general.