How Marketers Are/Are Going To Screw Up Social Advertising

Advertising & marketing in social media really can change everything, but firms need to be realistic.  Social media is NOT a panacea!  Just because you have a Facebook page and Twitter feed does not mean you’re doing it right; quite the contrary, most firms are doing it very, very wrong.

More Facebook Ad FAIL

For crying out loud.  Apparently now Facebook thinks I’m a black father, WTF? (click for larger image

Dear Mark Zuckerberg: Please Remove Your Head From Your Ass

Despite its ridiculous popularity and apparently top-notch staff (or so I’ve been told/heard), Facebook continues to disappoint.  Sure, the core service is OK (at best), but there’s sooooooo many painfully obvious changes that need to be made for the service to be considered good (lets not even talk about great yet, baby steps, baby steps).  In no particular order, here’s a few suggestions from a former web designer/programmer that I think would vastly improve the Facebook experience:

• Implement an option that blocks mobile notifications when logged-into the website.  Its pretty annoying when I’m sitting in front of my computer and then my blackberry blows up 30 seconds later.  Seriously, this is pretty simple shit, wtf, does anyone at Facebook actually use Facebook + Facebook Mobile?
• Please also add an option that allows users to choose from who they received notifications on photo/status/etc comments.  If I comment on a friend’s status/photo, I couldn’t give less of a shit if said friend’s friend – who I’ve never heard of, let alone met – left a comment after me.  Maybe some people do, however, most people with whom I’ve spoken, dont.
• While I applaud Facebook for having the best privacy options of the big social networking sites (Linkedin is awful, Myspace isn’t much better), it seems that Facebook doesn’t have a single employee whose sole job is to test Facebook’s privacy controls.  Seriously, would it kill you guys to, ya’ know, test shit before doing a full-scale roll-out?  And if you do test, you’re doing a horrible, pathetic job.  Get your shit together.
• Facebook is unique in that user profiles contain mostly-accurate, granular demographic data.  In the religion field, my profile clearly says “Jewish,” however just now (for the umpteenth time!), your “targeted advertising system” delivered an ad for ichurch.com “Dating for Christian Singles.”  THIS ISN’T ROCKET SCIENCE!  Seriously, what is the problem?  You even allow users to mark ads as useless/etc, which I have, dozens of times, but to no avail.  How you’re able to sell ads is frankly, beyond my comprehension, to the point where I wonder if you’re completely fudging the results ala Madoff.
• Your “customer service” department – to the extent that it uh, actually exists – is FUCKING USELESS.  USELESS! I’ve spent the past few months trying to establish an account for myself (Anal_yst, that is), however, your software apparently considers the word “anal” to be offensive and thus automatically blocks all of my registration efforts.  One of your “customer service” reps emailed me back (after a few weeks, that is) like one of us (or both?) had never used a computer before.  I emailed her back, and proceeded to wait what, 2+ weeks for another useless, inane response.  I asked to speak to her supervisor since she’d so conveniently wasted a month of my time (I was slightly more polite, in actuality), which resulted in an “apology” and more FUCKING USELESS instructions. Ma’am, and all of Team Facebook: While I may not be David Pogue or Walt Mossberg, it’d likely behoove you NOT to piss off someone who writes for The Atlantic. Be thankful I’m not (yet) of a vengeful demeanor.

Oh, and lest you doubt, here’s a screenshot from about 10 minutes ago illustrating how much your ad-delivery system blows.

If these are unintentional oversights, perhaps you’d like to hire me as a consultant.  My fees are very reasonable, and I guarantee I won’t just kiss management’s ass (clearly) and put together a bunch of pretty Power Point slides with a bunch of meaningless “statistics”.

If intentional, look, I get it: you’re between a rock and a hard place.  On one hand, you need to keep your users happy-enough that they don’t bail, but on the other, you need pageviews (etc).   Methinks you’d be well-served to pay more attention to the former, lest you inadvertently screw up the latter

Feel free to contact me if you have any further questions.

Regards,

Anal_yst