Facebook Bans Google+ Ads 548
Barbara, not Barbie writes "Not content with making it hard for people to export their Facebook contacts to Google+, Facebook has now banned all ads from app developer Michael Lee Johnson, who ran an ad saying 'Add Michael to Google+.' Facebook sent him the following message: 'Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.'"
Same story, different day... (Score:5, Interesting)
When will companies realize that putting your head in the sand and pretending the competition does not exist will make it go away? This is a stupid move on facebook's part. If you are scared of the new competition, than innovate and make your product better. Otherwise you will end up like Blockbuster, GM, and countless others examples throughout history.
seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
At the very least they should have changed their ToS and then notified him of what he's violated.
LoB
Re:Well, that's one way to advertise.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the most interesting 20% of my Facebook friends are on Google+. Perhaps the percentage is even higher.
So, as far as I'm concerned, everybody's already on Google+.
Re:Fuck yeah (Score:4, Interesting)
If Facebook doesn't IPO soon, the multi-year death-spiral will hit their investors first.
I think they missed the IPO boat. Investors are already nervous about FB.
Re:Well, that's one way to advertise.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure that I'd call Facebook a monopoly, but "market share" is a bad way to think about social networks, since if you add up everyone's market share you end up with more than 100%--people are on more than one network. Network effects are key here--people don't want a Facebook account because of specific features of Facebook, they want a Facebook account because everyone else has a Facebook account. So if you're looking for a competitor to Facebook, you don't just want a different social network, you want a different social network that all of your friends also belong to. And depending on who you are and who your friends are, Facebook may very well have a monopoly on that product.
Really, when you join Facebook, you aren't just becoming a customer, you're becoming the product--you're becoming the reason other people want to join Facebook, and the reason advertisers and app developers want to do business on Facebook.
Re:URLish searches are fine (Score:2, Interesting)
Yay for sending everything you type to google.
I do associate "g" keyword with google in Firefox, so I can explicitly google for something in the url bar when I want.
I also associate "w" with wikipedia.
w facebook
g facebook
Like that.
Re:Well, that's one way to advertise.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's definitely arguable. Google would be in deep antitrust if Facebook suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from all Google search results.
Not running the ads are one thing. Banning the account is another. If he can prove that he was negatively impacted by what was essentially punitive actions by a company for using a competitor, he might have grounds.
Search a URL for quick links & anti-phishing. (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope that you sir, are a perfect typist and never ever make typographical errors, especially when entering a URL. Thus you will never have to take advantage of the fact that if you enter the incorrect address into a Google search first it will direct you to the correct address and/or warn you of most malicious phishing sites that you may inadvertently visit via your much praised "address bar".
Furthermore, if you use most browser's "address bar" to incorrectly enter a URL and wind up at a phishing site, it will bring you back to the same phishing site automatically when you enter the partial URL via auto-completion search.
However, now Firefox and Chrome (unsure about IE) coordinates with lists of phishing sites in order to bring this functionality to their respective "URL / search bars" (they have no plain "address bar" available, even FF searches your history). Note that this feature most likely provides the anti-phishing provider with a list of every URL you visit online... Conversely, everyone can take advantage of the Google URL search features (including quick links to subsections of the site) regardless of the browser they are using.
Finally, I would also like you to shove your helpful suggestion into the previously recommended place considering that you do not seem qualified to be suggesting either against or for either URL entry technique, and I would recommend that you yourself follow the technique your insightful friend rightfully remains using before you make more uninformed suggestions.