Facebook Gets into Search Marketing, Kind of…

Is this the end of Google’s reign or the end of social media marketing? Yesterday Facebook rolled out the much hyped product launch of a new search engine. So why all the noise and why are so many media outlets completely ignoring the story?

Discovering the staged event only unveiled an internal “Graph Search”. Many, including popular tech blogs, seem to have completely dismissed the announcement as another ploy to prevent the social network’s share price from falling back into dismal territory.

However, those who really understand what it is all about realize that this foray into marketing has the potential to be a major disruptor in the near future. It’s almost like the plot of a comical, frustrated super-villain getting back at the world that shunned his genius…only the joke may really be on the jock hero this time.

Well, maybe…

All of the recent press on Facebook which has scoffed at the firm’s marketing efforts has really been a form of testing; taking social intelligence and market research in a new direction. This includes having to pay to send messages, paying $100 to send Mark Zuckerberg a message, and even Instagram’s recent privacy policy “blunder”.

It’s all been a series of tests: tests to see how far the social giant can go with selling user data without running into real trouble, and tests to see what marketers are willing to pay for data.

It”s all about becoming a major data vendor and users and businesses are going to get really upset when they discover how much of their private info is pawned to marketers. “Big data” is supposed to be the big thing this year, but it is also likely to mark a major downturn in social media as a marketing medium, at least as we know it.

There are few that will find forking out $100 to message a CEO really delivers an acceptable and sustainable ROI and for most businesses even $1 will be far too much. This is especially true when businesses wake up to the horrible quality of the data.

Some will make it work, particularly those with huge budgets and who can blend together complete customer profiles with their search history from Facebook’s tracking system. However, it will most likely mark the turn in the marketing cycle; the same downturn email marketing, direct mail, and telemarketing have all gone through in the past.