Surely the insurance companies would argue your phone is more likely to be lost or stolen *outside* your property?

Thanks for a very insightful comment.

“I expect this will show users who are very much focused on what their friends are doing, who is friends with who, what are the upcoming events etc – rather than taking notice of however well targeted social ads.”

Couldn’t agree more. Indeed, I suspect that the core demographic on Facebook are there to SuperPoke friends, write on walls and catch up on gossip. The key enabler is one user friendly site to manage all that from.

Like you, I’m also of the opinion that most people communicating directly with people they know online automatically tune out advertising. Hence the extremely low clickthrough rate on sites like MySpace (less than 1%, apparently).

It’ll certainly be interesting to see watch all this play out.

I intend to post an update on reactions in the blogosphere to this open letter shortly.

Some people are advocating I just cancel my FB account altogether and scrap the monthly subs idea:

http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2007/11/11/would-you-pay-for-no-facebook-ads/

It’s got to be tough working at Facebook right now…

If you lose your phone claim on your house insurance and ask the network to send you a new SIM card

That was a very interesting read and interpretation of social ads and their possible effectiveness and intrusion issues.

IMO brands paying for exposure will continue to be the driving force behind the revenue generation of social networks (and IPTV etc) but what interests me especially is how the conditioning of the vast majority of web users to ignore advertising (textual and banner based) over the past 4/5 years affects the recognition that these forms of advertising receive from a user.

My thoughts are that due to this conditioning, brands using social ads may well have placements receiving 6/7 figure ‘impressions’ but the ROI, brand development and click through rates will be stronger on more strategically placed and considered advertising slots ie. pre and post role video advertising that Sky Media Group are starting to use.

On Facebook especially, for all the reasons you mention such as the recreation of relationships and friendship circles, without yet seeing eye-tracking analysis (this is something we at PRWD intend to look at for research purposes) I expect this will show users who are very much focused on what their friends are doing, who is friends with who, what are the upcoming events etc – rather than taking notice of however well targeted social ads.

Once again a great read and I will follow this article with interest!

Paul