Maggie Fox on how hard it is to do market research on Facebook:
“I don’t want to know who, I just want to know what. I don’t need to take it down to the level of what Joe Blow says, I want to know what people are talking about generally. It is almost impossible to extract data from Facebook around who’s talking about what and whether it’s a favourable or negative conversation without doing it manually,” Ms. Fox said.
The marketer in me feels her pain. The research is painstaking! Who’s got the time or the money to have some poor sod sit there flipping through FB profiles and pages…. But the Facebook user in me figgers that “the trouble with Facebook” from a marketing point of view is probably a good thing.
The problem is that there are others less reputable than the Social Media Group who do in fact want to take it down to the level of what Joe Blow Peter Smith says, where he clicks, who his contacts are and what data he’s entering online. Phishing, spamming and all that naughty stuff. Let’s build a widget that secretly scapes all my profile data right?
If it weren’t for these types (and some of them work for companies that I buy crap from, I can just feel it when I go through my inbox or snail mail), I’d be all cool with letting Maggie & her gang collect more data.
In a perfect world, right?
Aside: that quote seems a bit slipshod the more I look at it — at first she says I don’t want to know who, but then she mentions that she would in fact like to know who‘s talking about what — hoping she was misquoted …
What's a spaghetti test?
