Think you exert an influence on your Facebook or MySpace friends? Then you could find yourself being used by advertisers to get people to pay more for products, according to US researchers.
Using economic models they predict new tactics to exploit the personal information that online social-networking sites provide.
One effective strategy could see free or cut-price products offered to the most influential online individuals to kickstart new fads, says , at Northwestern University, Illinois, US.
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Some very targeted advertising schemes using social networks exist, for example , which can tell your friends when you buy products on other websites. But Hartline says they will get smarter.
Influence and exploit
Hartline鈥檚 computer model assumes that people value a product more each time one of their friends buys the same item 鈥� and allows for the effect dying off as more friends join the trend.
If advertisers have access to people鈥檚 network of friends they can exploit this effect, in what Hartline calls an 鈥渋nfluence-and-exploit鈥� strategy. A company would first give away free or heavily discounted products to a select few individuals with the most influence.
After that, they would offer the same product to their friends at increasing, carefully calculated prices to track a product鈥檚 growing appeal. That should maximise a company鈥檚 possible income at each successive step.
False friends
Social networking sites hold all the information advertisers need to carry out such a strategy, says Hartline. 鈥淎n online service provider鈥檚 biggest asset is the data they have about their users. It鈥檚 how Google is making money hand-over-fist,鈥� Hartline suggests, 鈥渁nd that鈥檚 also true of social network services.鈥�
He admits that it can be difficult to judge whether online 鈥渇riends鈥� really do influence one another. However, he adds that it should be possible to filter false from true friends, for example by looking at the communication patterns between them, or whether they share mutual friends.
The influence-and-exploit tactic may find favour with some users excited at the prospect of being commercially rewarded for their popularity, says at the Human Centred Systems lab, University College London, UK.
Ad fatigue
But many people are becoming weary of marketing, she adds, or have other concerns. 鈥淭he vast majority of individuals are not aware of how much of their information is being stored, and when they do become aware, they object to it.鈥�
Hartline agrees privacy is important, but says market influences will weed out bad behaviour. 鈥淎ny company would receive a lot of bad press if it did something that wasn鈥檛 a legitimate, value-adding service,鈥� he says. 鈥淚鈥檓 sure there will be some that use data in inappropriate ways, but hopefully they won鈥檛 survive.鈥�
on the new marketing strategies was presented at the conference in Beijing, China.
