See? Nobody Buys on Facebook. Nobody Cares | Hacker News Reader

See? Nobody Buys on Facebook. Nobody Cares

blog.zuupy.com

15 pointsfezzl9 comments

For every person who wants to believe that facebook is the biggest thing since word-of-mouth, there is someone equally hoping the whole thing collapses in on itself.

Each party wants their outcome so passionately it's hard to believe that anyone can look at the data with a neutral frame of reference.

Okay, so how do you and I make money on both these types?

Find a good way to get the real data - and sell it for lots.

I'm so new here. Why would someone downvote my comment? Noting there are two types of people with different needs and predictable responses and asking how to make money... Sounds very appropriate for a hacker forum.

And the basis of arbitrage.

Spot-on there. Found myself leaning more towards the latter party, so I have started sitting out most of these debates.

Disabled my account in Dec 2010 and what I have figured out is that while Facebook is a powerful platform, but it is also pretty inefficient and unpredictable. You have to spend a lot of time and effort for returns that are not always predictable.

But that is just for me; may not necessarily the case for others.

The fundamental problem with social networking as it currently stands is that the advertisements are a distraction rather than being synergistic with the sites workflows. I used to use facebook to communicate with second-tier acquaintances (before realizing why I didn't really communicate with them in the first place)

If I want to buy something I have a pretty good idea of what I want (hard to draw thenwindow shoppers to an online store). That being said I will go and search ( google, not a social network )

I think an interesting case to look at was the Best Buy vs. Circuit City competition. After going head to head on prices for so long, Best Buy decided to raise their prices and better train their staff and service. If people know what they want, they can find it on Amazon, or New Egg, or somewhere online for cheaper than Best Buy can offer, often because of the sales tax exemption in buying from out of state vendors. What Best Buy discovered is that people come into Best Buy when they don't know what they want. When they need to ask a few questions and get some recommendations. Then they figure, "I might as well buy it while I'm here" and pay a little premium for it.

I have heard from a friend in the hotel business that the majority of the leads they get from Facebook are from Facebook messages (meaning friends telling one another about the hotel). The other efforts they've made with advertising and marketing have pretty much fallen flat.

There maybe a huge informal sector within Facebook. My older sister tells me she goes to Facebook to see pictures of merchandise from her friends before going to their house to buy stuff.

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