How Eduardo Saverin sold Facebook ads in 2004 (2012)

Slide 5 “The College Addiction” talks about the addictive nature of Facebook.<p>Using the word addiction must have been a sound sales pitch in the early days. An expression that has quickly been replaced by technical terms like ‘engagement’ and ‘retention’.

Discussed at the time (of the article): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4408304" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=4408304</a>

&gt; The knock on Facebook is often that it doesn’t have its ad strategy figured out.<p>Did a double take until I saw the date. This aged spectacularly poorly…

[2012] needed in title. That slide deck is certainly a historical artefact worth preserving.<p>And yeah, Facebook does roll off the tongue better than Thefacebook.com.

I&#x27;m assuming that all of those targeting factors match up to the user-provided info in their profile. So for instance &quot;house&#x2F;dormitory&quot; was probably a profile field back in 2004.<p>Kind of reminds me of how Google started selling ads, just buy a keyword, that&#x27;s it. And the CPM was determined by bidding (though I&#x27;m not sure how you make that fair)

I realise I’m probably not in a majority here on this one but: I’m not offended or too bothered by being targeted by ads on Facebook.<p>What I am offended by however is how poor the targeted ads are on Facebook. I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything based on one or even been tempted to.

They should be forced to display this in their sign up page.<p>And with bold letters:<p>&quot;Be warned: We are trying to sell target ads based on your sensitive personal information such as, but not limited to:<p>Sex Sexual Orientation Relationship status Income Education level &quot;