I read FB’s announcement yesterday and thought it was mildly interesting: getting companies to create their own profiles on FB and then allowing them to place “Social Ads” next to feed entries that (organically) relate to a company’s product or service. Nice ideas but (1) the company-with-profile isn’t really a new concept, and (2) the prevalence of feeds that happen to relate to a given advertiser’s offering seems dubious.

However, I read further detail this morning (from WSJ via paidContent):

Marketers will be able to infuse their ad messages into the activity of Facebook users. For example, a Facebook user who buys a movie ticket, makes travel plans or writes an online restaurant review on a participating Web site will receive a message asking if they want to share their action with their Facebook “friends.” (If the answer is yes, their friends will see the action and an ad like it or not.)

The code that a “participating Web site” can embed is called Beacon. It thus allows FB to capture various data points of preference outside facebook.com. If Zuckerberg & Co. can attract significant participation, this has the potential to be huge and, in my opinion, game-changing. People are often (not always) proud of certain purchase and consumption decisions. So while this may not work for dish soap (or maybe it could, e.g Method anyone?) it would seem a very nice fit for those sorts of products and services that people use to define themselves:

• media (film, TV, music, books, magazines)
• clothing
• cars
• furniture
• restaurants and bars (I def would expect a partnership with Yelp)

And so forth. I’m really interested to see how this pans out. But, at first blush, I think this could be big.

I recently added that quote to my Facebook profile. Though I’ve seen it attributed to a 19th century poet named Robert Browning, it is most commonly (and relevantly) attributed to 20th century architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Over the years, I’ve increasingly become a fan of minimalism — in music, design and my general approach to buying and owning stuff. I’ve found myself wanting to possess less, in part because I’ve moved frequently over the last 18 years, in part because I don’t like clutter, and in part because the things on which I spend time and money are often experiences (travel, dining) or can be converted to bits and thus stored on a hard drive (music, film).

Paul Graham of Y Combinator wrote a nice essay on “stuff” last month. I really like his notion of examining purchases for utility (in the John Stuart Mill sense) and the socioeconomic comparison of excessive ownership with excessive diet.

So maybe one of this year’s bonus recipients will buy the rooftop digs.