According to an Aug. 23 Wall Street Journal article, Facebook.com is about to launch a new advertising system that will tailor advertisements to users based on the interests and information they list on their profiles. This move expands on Facebook's existing advertising packages, which use gender, location and age to target potential clients.
In an e-mail to the Daily, Facebook representatives refused to comment on any future applications in development. But the Wall Street Journal article said that sources "familiar with the matter" had described the plan in detail.
This kind of customized advertising technology is already at work in Gmail's AdWords, which mines data from users' emails to present themed ads on the side of the web page, and at Amazon.com, which gets information from customers' purchases, said ExCollege Instructor David Millen, who will teach a course called "The Social Web: MySpace, YouTube, and Community Building Online" this fall.
One student finds targeted advertising helpful: "I think it's a good idea ... if the ads are for something I like, then I'd like to see what they have to offer and what they're advertising," senior Eric Connelly said.
But the "recommender technology" at work for Gmail, Amazon, and potentially Facebook is cutting edge, Millen explained. The information collected from these sources might not be as helpful as advertisers and businesses might hope, due mostly to the complexity of language and the multiple meanings attached to simple words.
"Inferring [a user's] interest from this kind of data is very difficult," Millen said. "Part of the reason it's difficult is ambiguity in our language - for example, we could be talking about 'Boston.' Are we talking about the place Boston or the group Boston? It's the ambiguity that makes these programs hard to write."
Advertisers may be further misdirected by Facebook users who simply do not have their real interests listed in their profiles.
Senior Tracy Van Tassel, a Facebook user herself, said she doesn't think Facebook represents students' interests accurately.
"I can't necessarily say I'm bothered by [this kind of advertising] because most of what Facebook has as my favorite movies and music are jokes," she said.
For junior Jarren Kanze, the advertising links provided by Gmail - and potentially by Facebook - will probably go unused. "I really doubt I'll end up clicking on any of the ads," she said. "I normally just ignore them, and I don't think that will change. [Gmail AdWords] doesn't bother me, but I've never followed any of the links."
Even Connelly said he may avoid clicking on the advertisements, despite their usefulness.
"I do find myself looking at [Gmail AdWords], but I hesitate to use them because I feel like I'm being advertised at," he said. "The same thing might happen on Facebook - we're not going there to find advertising."
The Wall Street Journal reported that out of respect for its users, Facebook will release only the profiles to advertisers, and will keep users' individual identities private.
But privacy is still a concern for one student: "I think it is an interesting idea, but it makes me a little uncomfortable that they would be using my personal information in that way," Kanze said.
Millen said that he thinks people will react most to the insertion of ads into Facebook's News Feed.
"Most people are trying to make sense of the activity in their social network by reading the News Feed," he said. "Now this has introduced new advertising information into the stream, and [those ads] either have to be attended to or not attended to," Millen said.
For other similar technologies, Millen explained, there is typically a choice in how the advertising is delivered.
"In most cases there is an 'opt-out' policy available that allows the individual to decide whether or not they want to receive ads and how they want the ads delivered," he said. "There might be other ways to deliver it instead of the news feed. I do believe that inserting ads in the news feed could be quite disruptive - just like the advertising at the bottom of the screen in cable television can be really distracting."
Whether or not Tufts students will be bothered by ads in the news feed depends on whether or not they read the feed in the first place. All of the students interviewed said that the news feed is not very important to them in using Facebook.
"I never read it," Van Tassel said.
Ultimately, it is likely that the reactions of Facebook users to the new advertising system will determine the success of the program. According to Millen, if students dislike the new system enough to create protest groups as they did with other changes to Facebook, they may be able to influence how Facebook uses their data.
"Online communities are often very powerful in their collection," he said.
