02 February 2009

Facebook utilises poll position

Facebook, the popular social networking website, has recently announced plans of using the site as a market research tool that will display market research polls to users targeted by the information posted on their pages.

The tool will be offered to brands seeking quick consumer response from a wide audience, which could be of great benefit thanks to the tool's real-time feedback. In addition, its potential as a market research tool should also reduce the use of focus groups, which are renowned for being both expensive and time consuming.

As it currently stands, there are 150 million users registered with Facebook. However, the introduction of such polls is likely to force a reaction from privacy campaigners - not an entirely unexpected outcome when considered with the exploitation of many internet users' privacy without their consent that has occurred recently and in the past.

Facebook founder and Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg, gave an example of the tool's abilities at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos. Zuckerberg conducted 12 sessions with the Facebook polls; in one poll - called Advice to the US President on Competitiveness - 120,000 Facebook user responses were recorded in twenty minutes when asked if the stimulus package is on target - 59 per cent stated "no", 15 per cent said "yes" and 26 per cent was unsure.

Polls will operate by being displayed in the user's feed; therefore, giving the user the option as to whether they would like to participate or not. Whilst it is likely to cause a stir from privacy campaigners, it is still perceived a better system than Facebook simply selling its database directly to market research organisations. It will also be possible for those participants to see how each of their friends and other participants voted, but the first set of official polls are not expected to take place until spring 2009.

Of course, it was only towards the end of 2008 that Facebook launched its Engagement Ads tool on the homepages of its users; these included event ads, page ads, regular website ads, video ads and gift ads. Now the polls ad will become the sixth type of home page ad made available to advertisers - though not an entirely new one.

Facebook originally offered a service to its users known as Facebook Polls - launched back in June 2007 - which allowed anyone to create a paid poll that targeted a specific group of users. This came to an end at the beginning of January 2009.

Facebook claims to be simply offering the tool to help organisations improve their products and services offered to consumers. It will be a matter of time until the benefits of using social networking sites for such purposes becomes clear.

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