Everyone, or at least the roughly 500 million Facebook users, knows by now that Facebook overhauled their user profile system back in April along with a slew of other changes. As written about previously (Facebook- Do You Like It), the profile change centered on enticing users to enter more detailed information about themselves and to keep it updated more frequently. This would allow Facebook to better target advertisements and ultimately provide advertisers better results.
The change appears to be working.
Like most private companies, Facebook keeps financial information close to the vest. However, outside estimates report that Facebook is on track to increase 2009 revenues by 63% in 2010 coming in at $1.1 billion (Inside Facebook).
At CS2, we are finding that the click-through rates and goal conversions of our Facebook ads are among the highest of all major digital mediums. Of course this is primarily because we develop kick-ass ads and landing pages, but we have to give Facebook some of the credit for helping us target the right audience.
Leveraging the new profile system even further, Facebook and Amazon have just rolled out a system for social product recommendations (Tech Crunch). Through this integration, users will see product recommendations based on their Facebook profile information and even receive notification and gift ideas for their Facebook friends on their upcoming birthdays.
During times of constant rumble over privacy and public outcries against profiling in general, Facebook seems to be immune as users appear to be embracing the profile change and are allowing themselves to be, well, profiled. One thing is for sure, if you have 500 million users (and growing) who are voluntarily providing information about their interests and “likes”, you become very popular with a lot of advertisers and advertising agencies. I expect the uses we are seeing now will be only the beginning steps of tapping into the enormous database that is Facebook’s users’ profile information.
