Consumer 2 Business

Redefining The Real Flow of Business

Is Your Business Facebook Ready?

Interested in buying a portion of Facebook, Microsoft has valued it at $10 billion. Regardless of how accurate this valuation is, the enterprise is worth billions without argument. Founder, Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t seem interested in selling out, considering he’s already received offers in the billions, for complete ownership, and refused.

Facebook still has options for raising revenue other than venture funding. One of these options is product tagging in pictures. Product tagging in Facebook pictures could offer Facebook some financial independence and expand their web 2.0 offerings.

Product Tagging In Facebook Pictures

When users upload a picture on Facebook, they can also add tags to a frame and describe the content within the picture. If a user’s Facebook friend is tagged in a picture, the tag becomes a hyperlink, allowing easy navigation to the tagged friend’s profile. Facebook should expand upon this feature by allowing businesses to create profiles. If a user decides to tag a product, brand, or place, then it can become a hyperlink listed below the pictures. A business could help facilitate the laborious task of picture tagging by giving special promotions and offerings to the Facebook users who tag their products in pictures. By implementing product tagging, your friends’ pictures would become a personal interactive billboard.

Example: A bar that my friend took her picture in looks cool. I click the bar’s tag that was automatically generated by the picture’s GPS metadata (the GPS feature on cameras isn’t yet widespread but it will be soon). By clicking the tag, I’m taken to a bar’s Facebook profile containing it’s GPS location data. The profile also has the link to the bar’s homepage, personal notes its been mentioned in, videos people took there, other people’s pictures who have the location tagged. In turn, I get a much clearer idea of the crowd the place attracts through the friends of the business. Users notes allow me to read peoples’ memories, opinions, and experiences relating to the place. Through pictures, I can see it from almost every angle. These features are all centrally located on the bar’s profile. The same concept applies to products. I can see how people are using a product and what kind of people are attracted to the product, etc.

The implementation of product tagging would give everyone something to gain:

Businesses pay to create a profile receiving a torrent of data allowing them to see how their business is being portrayed by Facebook users. To make information more presentable, they could also add an analytics application, like Google’s Analytics, that allows them to track trends and quantitative data, adding to the richness of the information they receive. A business is also able to position their products amongst the friends of Facebookers in a non-obtrusive way. I can’t even begin to imagine how much more effective a selling tool a friends picture would be as compared to an online banner.

Facebook generates a whole ton of revenue because the marketing is so effective businesses are willing to pay extravagant prices to have a profile.

The users benefit the most. We get deals for tagging things we already use, access to our friends things (example: that shirt looks cute, I wonder where she got it?) and every piece of information becomes subtly incorporated into our lives. Businesses that we have developed a bond with can now be considered our friends. We are allowed a whole new level of connectivity with the businesses that impact our lives.

If this hasn’t been done already, it will be soon. I just hope Facebook is the social network platform that offers it (or re-offers it).

Privacy Concerns

This idea will meet with some resistance by those who yell, “What about privacy?” Times are changing and that should go without saying. My generation has become conditioned to being tracked, and this has made us much more comfortable with divulging things that are revered as private by other people. We have been held more accountable for our actions from a younger age, and we’re viewed through a much more observing lens. After all, my thirteen year old brother has a cellphone that can be traced on a map and connected to a GPS navigator with a Verizon application. He’ll also have taken around 10 standardized tests that have traced his academic progress by the time he reaches college.

As we move into the future, our children will be exposed to even more personal tracking and exposure. Transparency is a trend that is going to accelerate as connectivity becomes easier. I don’t believe in fighting the trend. So, I work with it, and participate in the more positive aspects of growing transparency. If you are still uncomfortable, Facebook offers an extensive list of privacy options that can make you disappear off the Facebook grid.

The Impact

There are obvious downsides to businesses using this approach, as well. A business who uses the product tagging approach is exposing themselves in ways they can’t control. Sometimes, a business’ impact on a consumer is not a positive one. If they screw up, the negative reaction would be amplified under this system. Businesses participating in this system are putting a lot of trust into the hands of their customers, to help maintain a positive image in the public eye. If they don’t think they can develop this trust, or that this trust does not exist, it isn’t a problem with product tagging’s exposure, it’s a problem with the businesses’ image. Everything a business does will become that transparent eventually. Maybe a new criteria will evolve, “Is your business Facebook ready?”

Related Posts:

• The Power of Belief and The Current State of Social Networking
• Is Your Business GPS Ready?
• Marketers Not Welcome! – How To Crash A Party
• What Is Marketing?
• The Death of Desktops

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