Facebook’s Sponsored Stories are Insulting to Marketers

Social media marketers! You pay for advertisements, you pay for research, and you pay for expensive and sophisticated tracking and listening tools. It gets even better now with Facebook’s Sponsored Stories!

With Facebook’s Sponsored Stories, you now can pay to show off the statuses you’ve worked so hard to achieve! Strut that mention! Highlight that like! Make someone’s friends bask in the glow of their awkward check-in! What do you care how weird it gets? Friends like friends better than other ads they ignore because they can hold those awkward pairings against one another.

Look At What I Did - The Anti-Social Media

And Sponsored Stories aren’t creepy  for users at all! Sure, they make take advantage of things users have already put on Facebook to connect with their real friends, but it’s not like they hold users hostage.

The best part is that users can never elect to opt-out of Sponsored Stories, so you can finally reach that tiny segment of geriatric goths you’ve been trying to reach!

So, make that organic work inorganic. Commandeer the content users shared for personal use, and turn it into an advertisement! Users are waiting for you to make their Facebook experience more awkward right now!

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8 Responses to “Facebook’s Sponsored Stories are Insulting to Marketers”

  1. John Morrow February 8, 2011 at 9:26 am #

    Facebook knows no shame in it’s quest to become the evil overlord of the internet.

    Of course, it wouldn’t work if companies weren’t gullible enough to keep throwing money at them. “OMG, it’s a dumb idea from Facebook - we’ll make BILLIONS! OM NOM NOM!”

    • Jay February 8, 2011 at 2:52 pm #

      I want to draw a picture of people eating dumb ideas from Facebook now.

  2. Tim Soulo February 8, 2011 at 11:33 am #

    Well I personally think it’s just a matter of time and a couple of fails til facebook discovers a money source which will not insult anyone :)

    • Jay February 8, 2011 at 2:52 pm #

      They should sell t-shirts.

  3. Kim Woodbridge February 8, 2011 at 1:52 pm #

    And now I’m left to wonder … how many geriatric goths are out there?

    • Jay February 8, 2011 at 2:51 pm #

      Someone needs to start a blog for them. Not me though, I’ve got the disillusioned social media professionals cornered.

  4. Liz February 8, 2011 at 3:54 pm #

    ok,so sponsored stories are when a facebook user “likes” something and a brand seeing it, incorporates it into a marketing tool. whats the big deal? the goths can still comment, so can the the rest of us, but if the stories are sponsored and other than having an icon next to a post of a brand its all pretty much the same as before. marketing is about ideas and finding a way to spread awareness about your brand, and these sponsored stories are a way to do just that. it may not be the most aesthetically pleasing thing to see next to your comments but i think i can live with it, as far as business is concerned, its a good strategy, probably created by marketers so im not sure why they should feel insulted.

  5. Roxanna Salas February 10, 2011 at 5:04 pm #

    Let’s start a movement to boycott using brand names in status updates! I’m always giving praise to Starbucks and Redbull for keeping me sane, but NO MORE! Status updates will now consist of pound signs where beloved brands used to be: “I chugged a ### today in the hopes that I might grow wings, fly to Cali, and crap all over the Facebook headquarters.”

    Or…. maybe have more fun with it and make a mad-lib game out of it: “I invoked the powers of a *mariachi band* to insight creativity and help me tackle this press release.”

    Hmmm….