Sunday, November 9, 2008

Targeted Facebook ads

I've been in a relationship for a little over a year and a half, and it recently ended. I subsequently updated my Facebook status from "in a relationship" to "single". I also just had a birthday, and Facebook knows this too.

This morning, I'm going through my Facebook photos, and I notice this ad on the side:
37 and still single?
To which my inner voice replied, "Why, yes I am. And fuck you for asking."

I also got this one on a subsequent page:
10 Mistakes Guys Make: The 10 most dangerous mistakes you probably make with women and what to do about it.
I can tell you one mistake I made - using Facebook when I am in absolutely no mood to be told what's wrong with me.

I'm a capitalist at heart. I don't blame Facebook for allowing targeted ads. Google pays my bills with the same thing in search and GMail. And I certainly can't argue with the effectiveness of their targeting mechanism. Blasting the recently singled with dating advice is, I'm sure, marketing gold.

But it still pissed me off.

2 comments:

Derek said...

To which my inner voice replied, "Why, yes I am. And fuck you for asking."

Sorry, man. Your response made me smile, though.

I think Facebook has a pretty shitty user interface, so I use it as little as possible. Also, I must be good at tuning out ads...I hardly ever notice them.

Philip said...

I've started using the mega-feed lately as just a digest of what all my friends are doing, but I don't use it much other than that. I wouldn't use it at all if I didn't know so many folks for whom its their main feed. The emails are awful.