Facebook Part 2: "We don't like to talk about that."

Well, last night's Facebook Developer Garage was in fact a great sell by Facebook of its own platform. What was frustrating from a marketer's standpoint was how little they said about anything important to us: Creating customers, conversions, or generating buzz using their platform. "We don't like to talk about that," or some variation therein, was repeated often by Dave Morin of Facebook during the Q&A. Not that he didn't share a great deal of useful information during his presentation. For example, I now know that Facebook is, "really popular." Keep in mind, this was a developer's meeting. When the revolution comes, we marketers will be the first ones most developers will line up against the wall. I don't doubt that Facebook is popular, and will be getting more popular. What I haven't been convinced of yet is that Facebook marketing is necessary. MySpace still receives more traffic than Facebook, and businesses continue to thrive without being on it. Facebook does have a LOT of eyeballs, so it will eventually be necessary. What remains to be seen is if Facebook will allow us to do what we do.Finally, as Francine Hardaway pointed out at a Social Media Club meeting specifically about Facebook, the site is already choking from so many applications on it. A marketer's place would seem to be to help developers get their ideas seen by people, but not necessarily to get a company seen by Facebook users. For the time being, I would say Facebook is a developer's world - and marketers can only live in it.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)