Category: Online Advertising

With all the hype about Facebook in the media these days, some people may be inclined to dismiss it as the flavour of the month. That would be a mistake.

I think we, as marketers and consumers, have barely scratched the surface of what Facebook is capable of. Here’s just one example of another Facebook marketing experiment I conducted a few weeks ago.

My friend Jane was trying to rent her beautiful coach house in Toronto’s Cabbagetown district. She placed an ad on Craigslist and sent around an email message to her friends, but she didn’t get too many nibbles.

So I offered to help. Using Facebook’s status line feature (which tells your friends what you are up to), I told my network of Facebook friends, "Bill is looking for someone to rent a friend’s Cabbagetown coach house." I did this for about a week, and I updated the status line several times during the course of the week.