"
. With Waiting for “trusted referrals,” and how trustyworthy they’ll be…
Posted Under: "Social" studies
I’ve hardly studied this, but from this article amid the sea of Facebook-ad stories:
Through the branded pages program, advertisers can design custom pages with information, content, and custom applications–“any application that was written for users on the Facebook Platform,” Zuckerberg explained. Facebook users can sign up as “fans” of that brand, install branded applications, and other activities that will all show up in their profiles’ “mini feeds” and on the “news feeds” that are broadcast to their friends lists.
“When people engage your page on Facebook, that’s going to spread information about your brand virally through the social graph,” Zuckerberg said. “It becomes a trusted referral.”
It sounds to me that like that would be relatively easy to game: Offering people some kind of incentive (a rewards-points scheme, coupon or equivalent, giveaway-contest entry, etc.) to get them to sign on as “fans” of a brand, product, movie, etc., at which point their “trusted referral” shows up in their actual friends’ newsfeeds.
.
.
Kim Fellner's book 
.
A
Reader Comments
i’m not sure that people would fall for that kind of manipulation, at least not at a rate that would make it worth the brands’ time/money. people have proven to be pretty selective about what brands they associate with online — example: even if walmart offered me a $5 gift certificate for saying i’m a fan of walmart, i still wouldn’t do it, because then i’d have to be branded as a fan of walmart.
on the other hand, if the NYT offered me a $5 gift certificate, or a month free subscription, for high-fiving their brand, i would DEFINITELY do it — but, that’s because the NYT is already a trusted brand to me, and i’m proud to be associated with it in the first place – the freebie is just extra incentive. and in that case, it’s not manipulative, it’s more like nudging.
Wal Mart and the NYT are extreme examples — people tend to have quite strong feelings there.
There’s a big middle ground of stuff that you (or anybody else) buy and likes, but wouldn’t ID themselves as a “fan” of — without some “nudging.”
I didn’t say manipulate, I said “game.” My view is that your “nudging” and my “gaming” are the same thing. If the Times were to jack up its fan count by way of free one-month subs, I’d call that gaming the system. And I’d say it even though the Times pays my bills.