Overheard

“Oh boy! Another great opportunity for personal growth!”

“I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so. ... She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain—it’s that the pain is actually a gift. What’s the option? God doesn’t really give you another choice.”

After over a decade of user testing, it is clear that the way we search the web is similar to the way we would search our home for valuables as it was burning to the ground. Frantically.

“We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value ... The shift necessitates a fundamental change in our prevailing theory of the firm… The current theory holds that the singular goal of the corporation should be shareholder value maximization. Instead, companies should place customers at the center of the firm and focus on delighting them, while earning an acceptable return for shareholders.”

“We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.”

Comments

Thanks for the heads-up Travis, I wasn't aware of this issue. I've updated my privacy setting accordingly.

Posted by Jason Landry
  at 3:38 pm on Mar. 18, 2008

Hi Travis; I'm the head of the Kinzin team. I hope you'll excuse the long comment.

We've been experimenting with Facebook Social Ads for a few weeks now. Facebook Social Ads have a feature called "Social Actions", whereby, apparently, Facebook users will be told when a Friend of theirs (it has to be a Friend) has some relationship to the Facebook app or group being promoted. Honestly, I'd never actually seen it in action until looking at your screen shot today. As an advertiser, Facebook just says to us "Hey, we've got this great feature. You should use it." Obviously, it's a problem for me if Facebook offers me their social ads product with the suggestion that it will help our business grow, and it turns out to piss people off. We are going to ask around a bit more, but as of now have turned off social actions on our ads.

As a Facebook user, I'm of two minds about this whole trend. On the one hand, Facebook is a social, but proprietary, space. Basically everything we do and say in the space belongs to Facebook and they can use that information any way they like according to the Terms of Service we all agreed to. They make it pretty clear, in fact, that their whole business model is to sell that information. On the other hand, Facebook doesn't do much in the way of telling you *how* they'll use your info, just that they will. This is a new area: proprietary social spaces, and the standards of etiquette are still being set, apparently through trial and error.

Posted by Michael
  at 4:30 pm on Mar. 18, 2008

Interesting.

On the one side, you have me, being a fan of your service without really understanding the unintended consequences of that.

On the other, you have you guys, buying "social ads" without really understanding the unintended consequences of that.

And in the middle, you have Facebook, trying to broker and profit from our social relationship.

Posted by Travis Smith
  at 10:14 am on Mar. 19, 2008

It raises some very interesting questions about ownership and culture, to be sure.

As of now, though, I think we both understand the implications of Facebook's "social ads" a bit better. You can be sure that you won't see your status as a Fan of Kinzin used in that way again. I'm currently putting together a little statement of principles to post on the Kinzin Fan page, so everybody's expectations are in synch, and we don't run into this problem again.

Thanks for bringing it up, and helping us do what we do better.

Posted by Michael
  at 10:31 am on Mar. 19, 2008

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