This is a quiz about identifying corporate logos. You can see Nike and Ferrari. If you look at the drop down, you’ll see “Hide Movies”. This is actually Flixster. They added a quiz that is unrelated to movies. This is misleading. Why would they do this?
In the new Facebook redesign, quizzes rule. Flixster copied a leading quiz app to gain traffic. The quiz has nothing to do with movies. All Flixster is doing is trying to get traffic. With others competing for the same traffic, it’s a race to the bottom. Spam rules in such unmoderated systems. We’ve seen it before.
Facebook has multiple ‘virality channels.’ These are ways to put links to your application in front of people who are not using your applications. They are the basic ingredient to Facebook’s application platform.
Users’ time is the scarce resource of the Internet that limits the profits of most websites. Methods to get this resource include banner ads and emails. Companies choose to be ethical or unethical when trying to get users attention. There are few negative effects from unethical actions, and unethical behavior has a better return on investment. Unethical behavior inevitably dominates. It is a race to the bottom.
If ads and email are the way to get users’ time on the web, virality is Facebook’s way for applications to get attention. In this sense, Facebook’s virality channels are just ads. Negative effects from unethical behavior are minor and rewards are greater. Virality is therefore inevitably another race to the bottom.
Facebook, is not designed by glacially-slow committees. When Facebook changes, the power of unethical behaviors change and the result is a new course in the race to the bottom. The latest redesign favors image-heavy quiz notifications. This leads companies to copy this design in the fight for attention. An application all movie reviews is now quizzing users about logos. I find that misleading and unethical.
Unlike email and banners, Facebook spam is hard to recognize. When they redesign their site, the methods we all unconsciously use to filter out spam become obsolete. We can no longer differentiate what is spam and what is useful. The delay after the redesign before spammers figure out how to exploit the new features, means that there is initially less spam. Users will develop new spam-filtering behavior before the spam flood begins. When the spam begins, users must once again adjust their filters. Unlike email and banner ads, users are relatively unprotected from Facebook spam.
Facebook notifications are spam.
(I can’t think of a solution, so don’t ask. Just as some emails are not spam and some banners are not misleading, there are good uses of Facebook virality channels.)
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