A Lovely Facebook Experiment With Sequoia Capital and Others
by pcorbett on November 28th, 2007
One November 6th, Facebook announced their new advertising platform and included details regarding how Facebook Pages would work for brand partners. A few days later (yes I’m a little slow) I began an experiment with a handful of other interactive strategists from around the country to gauge the effectiveness and understand the implications behind this new system.
Our competition was simple: create Facebook Pages and see who gets the most users based purely on the power of the brand - we weren’t to promote the page outside the Facebook system. The winning strategist would have won based on their ability to predict which brand would have the most active brand evangelists in the Facebook system who are willing to become their fans (I’m currently losing!).
While I was hoping for a bit more time to collect data and then come public with my findings, Fred Wilson’s post on A VC added a very interesting variable to the mix and a fellow interactive strategist has already posted their findings here: Sam Huleatt’s Leveraging Ideas.
So without further delay some insight into the Sequoia Page and some others I created:
Snapshot of my initial pages and fans as of 12/27/2007
You can visit each page here: Corona, iStrategyLabs, Nintendo Wii (Removed by Facebook), Sequoia Capital, Under Armour
If you’re a brand manager for any of the above, just drop me a line and I’ll coordinate with Facebook to hand you over control of the page. This exercise was not built in order to squat on these pages permanently and it would be silly to delete them at the end of this as the fan base would be disbanded by that action doing more harm than good in my opinion.
So, I’ll start with Sequoia Capital, because it’s the reason why I’m prematurely posting these findings:
Sequoia Capital Fan Growth and Demographics
At the end of the first 6 days Sequoia Capital had a whopping 13 fans. Then Fred Wilson’s post on A VC tipped his readership to the fact that the page existed, and the fan base leapt to 237 in two days. The funny part is, I found the source of the bump because I had integrated Tolga Orhon’s Simply RSS Facebook application into the page as an easy way to populate dynamic content in the page and I saw Fred’s post in the page’s feed reader itself
I used the Technorati RSS feed for “Sequoia Capital” with ‘a lot of authority’. Quick side note: is ‘a lot of authority’ the best filtering you can provide Technorati? I mean really…it seems logical that I should be able to set an authority minimum (i.e. feed me posts from blogs about Sequoia Capital that have at least 400 authority)!
So, I’ve only got about 3 days of good data at this point, but look at the demographic breakout above. 93% of fans are male and 74% are greater than 24 years of age. That’s not surprising really based on the fact that this is a VC that folks are becoming fans of. As if Fred didn’t know the composition of his audience already, now he’s got a great look at a selection of people who read his blog! All the data above I attribute to A VC readers except 13 folks who were already fans (whose data was not visible yet as the sample size was too small and Facebook is attempting to…eh hem…protect user privacy).
The more interesting data is yet to come. I’m going to be looking at whether or not there is drop off in fans based on the fact that this is not an official Sequoia Capital page. And by the way folks….99% of the pages in Facebook (my guess) are not ‘official’ brand pages.
As of this moment I won’t be recommending that my clients spend anytime whatsoever creating Facebook Pages. There’s much lower hanging fruit out there at the moment - namely…actually having an overarching social media strategy for example. If you have a good case study on the use of Facebook Pages for a major brand, however, please let me know because folks are curious to see one..especially me.
I have to say though…it’s a lot of fun to play with Facebook Pages. Go ahead and make one yourself! Facebook will probably take the pages back from you at some point if the brand wants them, but in the mean time you’ll learn a little about interactive marketing in the process.
Sam
November 27th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Peter - Since I love to debate, I wanted to point out that the ~257 fans you suggest joined the Sequoia page as a result of the Fred's link could be misleading. The primary way that the people learn of a FB Page is by seeing a friend of theirs who also added the Page (populates to the feed). It stands to reason that a friend seeing another friend become a fan of a particular page greatly increases the odds that that person will also 'fan' the Page since people tend to do what their friends do. Facebook is viral like that. Thus, while highly unlikely, it is theoretically possible that Fred's post could have resulted in only 1 Facebook member directly becoming a fan of the Sequoia Page. However, that one notification then goes into the feeds of say 20 people, two of which also add it, which then goes into the feeds of 10 more people…yada, yada, network effect. I'm sure Fred's post in responsible for the good number of the 259 new Sequoia members, but just wanted to point out that all 257 may not be A VC readers. - Peter's Friend Sam
Peter Corbett
November 28th, 2007 at 4:10 am
Sam, I completely agree with you. It was certainly an oversight on my part to disregard fan adoption as a result of mini-feed inclusion. That leads me to a thought about a feature Facebook should include in their pages platform: the ability to track fan sources. Wouldn't a brand want to know fans were driven by "Blog Post A" vs. "Banner Ad B" vs. "Passional User C"? If we knew that, then brands could identify and incentivize their most passionate brand evangelists directly.
Ben
November 29th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
I think the expirement is flawed because the "Sequoia" page is not truly a Sequoia property. Since it doesn't belong to them and they aren't maintaining it, I think fan growth will either halt or diminish. I like the expirement but using Sequoia isn't a good brand to use.
Peter Corbett
November 29th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Perhaps you're right Ben. I'll be posting the Nintendo Wii and American Eagle Outfitters metrics soon.
Aruni Gunasegaram
November 30th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I saw your blog mentioned on Fred's AVC blog. I only recently joined facebook and am trying to figure everything out. I was going to wait to set up a company page but given that people can set it up in your stead, I figured I'd be proactive. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1485936060... I saw your post about adding a feed to the company page and I still haven't figured it out. I added Simply RSS to my page and imported some feeds but I'm not sure how to do it for the company page too. When I hit the Simply RSS app, it takes me to the feeds I've already imported on my blog… any insights? Thanks!
Mark
December 7th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
you said you were "squatting", but I don't think it's that. I can go set up a Sequoia Capital Page, and so can 100 others, (I think).
thomas duffy
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:24 am
I work with early stage ventures commercializing breakthrough technologies in industrial, resource,entertainment, and energy fields. In addition to the consulting work, there’s always a capital component and I’m always on the lookout for new, aggressive sources for these ventures.
Best,
thomas duffy
vci.llc
o 860-350-4440
tduffy132@gmail.com