An Internal Note Shows Facebook Learned a Way To Target High Schoolers Through a Viral Polling App It Acquired Last Year: Report (buzzfeednews.com) 22
Facebook bought TBH last October and eventually shut it down, but an internal note, obtained by BuzzFeed News, shows that the company learned a way to target high schoolers through the viral polling app. From a report: When Facebook purchased TBH last October it got more than just a viral polling app that amassed 2.5 million daily users, mostly teens, a few months after launch. The social network also acquired a carefully honed growth strategy targeted toward high school kids. An internal document from Facebook, obtained by BuzzFeed News, shows TBH's leadership explaining a well-tested method the startup used to attract teens at individual high schools to download its app. The note provides a window into Facebook's growth-at-any-costs mentality and the company's efforts to keep a key demographic engaged as its popularity among teens declines and it simultaneously runs out of people in the connected world to bring to its platform. In the confidential memo, TBH's founders told their new colleagues of "a psychological trick" that they employed to acquire teenage users en masse -- a combination of scraping Instagram for high schoolers' accounts, playing to youthful curiosity, and taking advantage of class dismissal hours.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All people are vulnerable to such manipulations. Just not everyone is vulnerable to the same ones.
Except me of course. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to buy tickets to wait in line for 3 hours to listen to an actor give me a live commercial for a movie I already bought tickets for when it was announced.
It took an acquisition? (Score:3)
This is just more evidence of how tone deaf Silicon Valley and especially Facebook are to general social skills, just as they are towards privacy. Hell, the whole approach sounds like Marketing 101 case study examples. But gaining such knowledge requires studying and picking up a book.
I Hate Facebook (Score:1)
Facebook is, time and time and time again, pure evil.
Re: You Know Who Else Targets High Schoolers? (Score:1)
Pedophiles
They like people with breasts? That word doesn't mean what you think it does.
Try 'ephebophiles' but that doesn't invoke 'think of the children' hysteria.
Evil, simply put (Score:2)
I don't care how many $$ Zuk can get using this-- it is EVIL. Go to Hell EVIL. Got enough bucks to get out of that?
Re: Evil, simply put (Score:2)
Yes, yes he does, because you can buy absolution.
if u dont kno (Score:1)
Target high-schoolers... (Score:2)
...with this one weird trick!
Polling and quizzes? (Score:1)
Wasn't that pretty much how Buzzfeed got it's start? Dumb quizzes, top 10s, and tons and tons of content straight up copied from other sites?
Supposedly their news is decent. But I refuse to go to their site in general.