Nate Lanxon
Nate Lanxon is CNET UK's Senior Editor of News and Features, and covers every aspect of technology for Crave. He also enjoys popular-science books, obscure Japanese animation and plays 'technical metal' on the drums, whatever that is.
Friday 12 June 2009, 4:50pm
Your grief is lucrative for Facebook
"By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness." -Emily Bronte
Surprise! Googling classic English literature has not been the only thing I've done this week. Recently, I had the unpleasant job of changing my relationship status on Facebook from 'In a relationship' to 'Single'. Not something I've had to do for over four years. Well, I wasn't on Facebook then, but you get the idea.
But as should have come as little surprise, advertisers are heartless, lecherous bar stewards, primed to profit from my fragile first few weeks. In fact, within seconds my profile page was pummelled with singles ads, just rubbing it in that I'd had to change my status.
'Single? In London?', 'Get a Hot Girlfriend!'
'Thousands of single girls work near you'
'Come and meet sexy singles in your area'
I'm realistic about keyword-based targeted advertising. It's effective, it's direct and it can be highly lucrative. But Jesus friggin' Chrysler, could you at least give me a couple of weeks to start mending, Facebook?
Marking the ads as inappropriate or offensive was a bitter waste of my precious finger energy, and short of changing my status to 'In a relationship with a giant gay man', I can only think to do one other thing: whinge about it on CNET.
If you've ever felt miffed at Facebook's targeted advertising, by all means leave a note below. You'll have to go some to beat our chief sub-editor Nick Hide, who's regularly greeted on the FB by ads mocking him for being '27 and still single?'
Comments on this post
What are ads? I've never seen one since I installed AdBlock :D
Posted by r3loaded on Fri 12 June, 2009 6:01 PM
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So r3loaded your using this website without giving them add revenue, naughty naughty
Posted by jasonquinn351 on Fri 12 June, 2009 6:51 PM
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Nate, please use spell check. "facebok" and "inapropriate" are not words :) r3loaded, I'm very glad that few people use ad blockers, but if everyone used them, sites like Facebook and CNet wouldn't exist. It seems that you'd prefer to have to pay a subscription cost for every website you visit that's currently free?
Posted by Nick G on Sat 13 June, 2009 12:18 PM
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Thanks for that, Nick G. They were indeed a pair of atrocious typos. Thanks for pointing out our late-Friday failings. They have been fixed.
Posted by Nate, CNET UK on Sat 13 June, 2009 2:36 PM
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Tough luck mate. More fish in the sea. And more on facebook!
Posted by Muz A on Mon 15 June, 2009 9:20 PM
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I think it was the barnet. Or maybe the stripey Cityboy shirt. Nope. Deffo the hair. And as for targeted ads, why did phorm= evil and gmail = cool? TB Lee = P.R.A.T. Top marks for dropping some Bront in a techblog, btw. She like rocks, innit?
Posted by Dawg on Sun 2 August, 2009 1:08 AM
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Articles by Nate Lanxon
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