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News Feeds to be hijacked by advertisers on Facebook

I just read this on Mashable today and was terribly concerned: 

Brands may soon be able to advertise in the news feeds of Facebook users who aren’t fans of their pages.

The social network revealed Tuesday that it will begin testing promoted posts that can reach people who haven’t “liked” a company’s Facebook page.

“Starting soon, we are beginning a very small test that will allow marketers to promote page posts to people beyond their fans in the news feed,” says Facebook spokeswoman Annie Ta. “These ads may appear on both desktop and mobile.”

The ads will look like typical page post ads in the news feed, but will be labeled as “sponsored,” Ta tellsMashable in an email. A screenshot of the ad shows an option to “like” a company’s page in the top right hand corner of the post.

“We think this will make it easier for businesses to reach more people,” she says.

Currently, only fans who like a brand’s page receive its posts in their news feeds.

Last week, Facebook introduced new mobile ad units to help app developers market themselves. The units drive users to new apps to download in Apple’s App Store or Google Play.

Facebook says it has directed users to both app stores 146 million times, from early July to early August, through clicks from news feed, timeline, bookmarks and App Center.

In June, the social media giant introduced Sponsored Stories for the news feed that are specifically for mobile devices.

 

I would like everyone’s viewpoints on this new and destructive feature that Facebook intends to enable. As a digital agency, I am yet to get into that mindset of wondering how it might help my clients but as a Facebook user, I am terribly concerned. Facebook already allows advertising their posts to existing fans on their news feeds but this is like an ‘open to all’ hijacking of a Facebook user’s news feed. I am sure this will call for more stringent advertising guidelines but I think Mark Zuckerberg is plain acting greedy and is set to make another Orkut to drive users away: probably to Google+.

Would love what the Rodinhoods / Rodinhooders 😛 have to say about this move. 

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