Are they paying for it?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cartagena-Colombia/COLDWELL-BANKER/38095805588

Nick, thanks for keeping us in the loop. This sounds like another version of collaborative filtering. Clearly will drive numbers (and ostensibly value) of big brands’ Facebook Pages, few of which have produced value. Cheers-

“People you may know” is now just “Suggestions”

@Jackie: would give Facebook so important funding if they did and there is a saying ‘no such thing as free publicity’

@FB: Hope these ‘recommendations’ are certified for authenticity!

I don’t know who Sarah Lacy is, but yesterday I was noticing that Facebook was suggesting under the “people you may know” thing such figures as 50 Cent, Rhianna, and Al Franken. I thought it was odd, since nothing in my keywords or anything indicates I’d be interested in being friends or fans of any of these public figures. I clicked Al Franken just to see what would happen and I was told I was instantly a “supporter” … not a “friend.”

I don’t think this is a good idea for a few reasons:

1) There are already enough businesses/brands on Facebook that think they can have a personal profile — they must’ve gotten lost on their way to MySpace or something. I think this feature will only further confuse people, because I wasn’t a “friend” of Al Franken, I was suddenly a “supporter.” Yet it was under “people you may know” … so which is it? Should they decide to implement this feature, it should be in its own section on the homepage, call it something like, “We thought you might like …” or something.

2) If I am really, TRULY a fan or somebody or something, I will seek them/it out on Facebook. I am a real, genuine fan of Martina McBride, and I went through the trouble of searching for her name on FB in order to find her page. By putting these “suggested” public profiles on the homepage, it gives the impression that we as FB users are too lazy to go find things that we’re really fans of.

3) Not only that, but by making public brands/figures so accessible as a click of a button, would that not further emphasize the numbers game and cheapen the entire aspect of what it means to be a “fan” or something?

When companies start publicly supporting and promoting members of the media (IE FB and Twitter), there’s no way those reporters can be taken seriously anymore. They lose their credibility and no matter what they write, you have to question their objectivity. It’s akin to a reporter being paid by the company, because they are personally benefiting from these “suggestions.”

Paid reporters are essentially…flacks.

This just makes me really sad about the future of FB. The redesign was bad, but I figured we’d all get used to it. These new recommendations smack of product placement, and are completely insensitive to personal preferences. You want to recommend things to me? Fine, partner with amazon to use their great recommendation software. The new FB recommendations have NOTHING to do with me interests or friends’ interests. This is just more noise. FB is turning into a damn AOL portal. Sigh.

If they really want to do this, and it could be nice if well developed, they should refine the algorithm to suggest me pages that I could be truly interested in.
For instance, it should understand from my base of already subscribed pages that I’m a metal music fan, so there’s no point in suggesting me Lady Gaga or Rihanna, even if many of my friends have those among their fan pages.

So first they stop posting the “…is now friends with…” stories from the news feed, now they spam the ‘People You May Know’ tool with public profiles.

They’re essentially making it harder (or at least less convenient) for you to find and add real-life friends and acquaintances, which I always thought was the main point of facebook?

Great to see the #s here. Can’t wait to hear more on how this is determined.

@Stu said, “…which I always thought was the main point of facebook.”

No, this is not the main point of facebook. The main point of facebook is to generate revenue. Anything else you through was only to get you to sign up and become invested in facebook.

Sorry about that,
Facebook

I’d like to find out how to turn this “wonderful” new feature OFF, or, if that’s not possible, to shove it to the bottom of my page and put my friends birthdays up at the top, in it’s place! That would be really helpful.

I sat around clicking the “X” on most of them last night (to see how long it would take to get through them), only to have even more show up this morning. It seems that they took every one of the fan pages and friends that were on any of my friends pages, and recommended them. Also, it has people suggested to me there that I had previously said I didn’t know.

This is the most annoying feature yet. If I’m a fan of something, I’ll go out and find a page own my own. The last thing I need to see is Waffle House alongside suggested friends and former classmates.

I already sent them feedback about this. I don’t use the “Pages” part of Facebook and don’t feel that it should be put at the forefront of my “People You May Know”. I think that spot should be reserved for…wait for it…people I may know. It seems the “suggestions” are just being culled from what my friends have recently added as pages, many of which end up being colleges and even bars completely out of my region and are irrelevant to me.

I think someone need to look at how public profiles are chosen for the suggestions applet and how they are managed. Only 5 at a time are picked and this is not dynamic. They are only updated it someone clicks do not show suggestion or join the profile. This means the members will never see another public profile unless they take an action on the ones displayed. Why is this not dynamic. The suggestions list should be recreated not appended to so that the same 5 stay there indefinitely. If all your friends leave a public profile and it is in your suggestion it is not removed. The suggestions need to be dynamic and updated as and when user authenticate to reflect a real time picture of what should be suggested.

This method causes a bottleneck and means the suggestions wont get update each and every time the user authenticates or refreshes the screen. The feed is dynamic and the suggestions should be to or at least created fresh when a member logs onto the system. Not stored indefinitely and not over written.

This approach also means that other public profiles wont get exposure unless the members are very active with the suggestions applet.

My feeling is that the suggestions should give a snap shot of what is popular when the member authenticates. Not wat was popular 3 days ago. It needs to be overwritten not appended to each time it is updated.

I noticed this week that an issues has come to light to do with the introduction of public profile suggestions and the effect it is having on public profiles. I thought you might be interested in the followin information

Some stats and information for you facebook has 360,000 public profiles. The top 100 most active take over 45% of the new traffic and 90%+ fall into the category of not being a legitimate public profile as defined in the T&C for setting one up.

With the top 10 all failing to comply with facebook T&C

i hate “battery low!”
Cuddling
The Weekend
I ? SLEEP
Music!
Prayer
A veces me gustaria retroceder el tiempo
Pizza
Thunderstorms
Not being on fire

The top 300 most active profiles take 70% of new traffic and members and again the same applies.

So to summarize 0.09% of the 360,000 public profiles get 70% of the new members. over 80% of the public profiles get no new members.

My belief is this is due to the way in which the suggestions and highlights applets work and considering many people spend time, money and effort in setting up legitimate public profiles I think facebook should look at doing some house keeping and removing the ones that fall outside of the T&C’s.

I have sent a few emails to facebook expressing my concerns but wanted to make more admins aware of the situation as we all work hard to promote out profiles and this situation isn’t helping

Feels like an even looser way to connect people. Not a bad thing, if they can ever sort out their newsfeed by “connection power”