Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Facebook and Formulas


Facebook and Formulas
        Facebook has more than one formula. Facebook as an organization has mathematical formulas that collect user information from each of our pages and the formula decides what advertisements to display. This same formula also decides what people to suggest as our friends.
Different businesses use Facebook as a marketing tool and these companies also have a formula their own to get the attention of the audience they desire.
        Following is the Facebook formula used to determine what is in a streamed into a newsfeed on a Facebook page: affinity is how often the user’s friends are interacting with the published content on the page, weight is how each type of content is weighted differently based on the user’s past interactions, and time is the age of the post (Sietsema, 2010).
       The insights gained from the formulas mentioned previously are; that every click we make on Facebook is now put through this formula and analyzed. The information gathered is being used to post the most appealing advertisements and posts for each user and the friends on the user’s page.  Facebook also uses this formula to collect information for businesses that pay to market their product on Facebook.  Every time a user clicks that they like a business or product it is displayed not only on their page but their friend’s page also. The user’s friend also has the option of clicking they like it and then it is displayed on all their friends Facebook pages.  Marketing of houses, restaurants, healthcare managed care companies and stores is widespread through Facebook.  What we are exposed to on Facebook is based on the clicks we make so before I click the next time I will be thinking about what I am clicking.



References
Browne, R. B. (2005). Profiles of popular culture. (pp. 115-117). Wisconsin: The University
               of Wisconsin Press.
Sietsema, C. (2010, 05 12). The formula behind the facebook news feed. Retrieved from  
       http://teachtofishdigital.com/facebook-news-feed-optimization/

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