Face Forward Overview

Tapping into the Facebook universe

The Facebook model: Context-sensitive advertising
Advertising in Facebook is context-sensitive and uses information freely given by members to target constituents. This advertising-driven model is a natural fit for marketing and, by extension, for marketing research.

Unique ID = Unique opportunities
It is logical that in this environment research should follow this model of targeting, but researchers, unlike advertisers, can leverage the unique Facebook user ID to ensure unique participation. This is the chief advantage over a simple intercept outside of Facebook: this user ID is the key to targeted, streamlined, repeated and engaging interaction.

ZINC’s industry-first solution
Our team has designed the most robust market research platform available for the Facebook environment – a full-featured web research platform that has been seamlessly ported into the Facebook user environment through the Facebook Platform API. This native Facebook survey engine limits questions to 100 characters, five choices, and one answer. There are no inherent technical design limitations in our platform; the only limits are social: If you can think it, you can ask it.

A major distinction is that this is not a conventional recruited survey access panel; rather, surveys occur within the wired world of real people. As with access panels, they can be targeted by age, gender, region – but they can also be targeted by social networking ties. Imagine, you can undertake remarkable targeting among Facebook’s 175 million+ subscribers! But keep in mind: while these Facebook members might freely offer opinions, this is not their purpose here. Facebook is a social network, not a panel. Create interest, reward participants with information, entertain them, respect them, and in turn you will be rewarded with their input.

Face Forward's Survey Engine within the Research/Engagement Platform
Click here to try our live demo: http://apps.facebook.com/mysurvey/?sid=curious_fb
This is an example of what a survey looks like in an earlier iteration of the Facebook platform (we have upgraded the data collection engine as the Facebook platform has evolved; click on the demo above to see the latest iteration).



Our production-proven DASH web survey application running through the Facebook API.



Facebook facts and figures: how social networking is going mainstream
Facebook has more than 175 million active users. In fact, Canada has the most users per capita among western countries, with more than 11.5 million active users— which is 3 in 5 online adult Canadians!

Networks/Demographics:

• Over 25 million active user groups
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest-growing demographic is those 30 years old and older

Applications:

• More than 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 7 million videos uploaded each month
• More than 28 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each month
• More than 2 million events created each month

This information is of course out of date as we type it; current data can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/press.php#/press/info.php?statistics

Facebook Tracking
ZINC Research has been tracking the Facebook phenomena on our online omnibus surveys, Pioneer (USA) and Voyageur (Canada). Our tracking demonstrates that Facebook is a social networking site with a high level of stickiness that is gaining traction rapidly.

Canada (April 2008)

USA (April 2008)

Highest level of social networking site awareness – 96% of adult online Canadians have heard of Facebook (higher incidence of younger with higher income and education) 60% of adult Canadians are registered on a social networking site, with 85% registered on Facebook (51% of all adult online Canadians). Spend on average about 6 hours a week on Facebook – more than 50 minutes a day. Most important aspect of social networking sites – staying in touch with friends (49% of users indicating “very important”).

High level of social networking site awareness – 80% of adult online Americans have heard of Facebook (higher incidence of younger with higher income and education) 21% of adult Americans are currently registered on Facebook, with another 10% considering joining. Spend on average under 5 hours a week on Facebook – more than 40 minutes a day. Most important aspect of social networking sites – staying in touch with friends (53% of users indicating “very important”).