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Comment by tomrod | Hacker News Reader

I call bull. Spam accounts are rampant. Based on my personal experience, people are beginning to leave. Roughly 20% of my personal friends have left in the last 6 months for varying reasons. I know I am one datapoint, but without hard statistics from FB servers it's the best I have.

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Did they go to Google+?

Survey numbers certainly support the "facebook is full of shit" idea. There was a post recently where someone did a poll with google consumer surveys and found only 42% of US internet users have a facebook account:

http://diegobasch.com/42-of-us-internet-users-have-a-faceboo...

Still, it's an impressive number. Compare that # to the first 10 years of cable, then remember that Facebook is all of it whereas cable consisted of lots of independent channels.

I'm not sure why you would suggest comparing it to cable, I can't imagine up any way that could make a reasonable or useful analogy. It may well be an impressive number, but nobody asked if it was impressive, they asked if facebook lies about their numbers.

The internet and cable television are different forms of broadcasting.

Google IO brushed on this topic and quantised the marketing potential of different forms of broadcasting in a graph:

http://i.imgur.com/akG0F.png

TV advertisers are restricted to one way flow of information, so advertising is about building brand. It's difficult to convert this into conversions. On-line advertising however have accurate statistics because of the available analytical software. Advertisers stick to conversions only as it's still a wild west when it comes to accurate impressions (even Facebook has been caught cheating on viewer counts). Until advertisers cater to surfers the full potential of on-line advertising won't be realised.

I assume it's what caused the shortfall in Google IO's graph, I personally feel on-line marketing understated as a medium.

And facebook is not the internet or television, which is why it doesn't make any sense as an analogy. Comparing how many TV viewers MTV gets to how many internet users facebook gets would be a reasonable analogy. Comparing how many internet users facebook gets to how many people have cable is nonsensical.

In my opinion, if you are sitting on a marketing budget for a retail product trying to make decisions, they are important facts to have.

I would say that knowing the absolute reach of as many channels as possible is important including billboards etc. If you expect a 0.5% conversion rate, as long as you filter out ones that reach less than a million people a week, all of your options represent a serious return.

I have no idea what you are trying to say. You think that making a bad analogy is an important fact?

Facebook and cable have the same customers. That is why it is a good idea to talk about their respective reach.

That doesn't make a senseless analogy any less senseless. I didn't say "you shouldn't talk about how many users facebook has", in fact I talked about how many they have. I said that the analogy he made doesn't make any sense. Facebook isn't comparable to cable, it is comparable to a channel.

I wouldn't trust Google consumer surveys that blindly either.

I ran a pricing survey there a while ago and a lot of people were willing to pay 11111111111 or 12345 dollars per month.

there are other coutries in the world that are not the United States

Oranges grow on trees.

Seriously, did you have something to add to the conversation, or are you just pointing out random things everyone knows?

I am counted as 4 people at least.

Back in 2008, I created some accounts for fun to see how Facebook worked, began sending out random requests first day to 4-5 people, next day to 4,5 people. On the third day I had more than 40 friends and was in a circle in some other country and people began writing on my wall asking how I am. Lame.

And do you still log into those accounts every month?

Yes I do, have to keep up with my friends. Sometimes I post pictures from the other accounts, but not very often, just enough to seem legit. Facebook has detected that one of the accounts may be false, and has warned me about it, thats why I began posting and sharing stuff so their bull-detecting-system wouldnt go off. It hasnt so far.

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