Facebook (FB, Financial) has partnered with analyst company DataSift (DATA), which will pull out data from the social network, analyze it and then make it available to its interested partners. DataSift’s partners, who uses this data, can then build technologies designed to analyze the data and extract from it meaningful insights for both marketers and other parties.
Benefits
For now, Facebook is working on this project exclusively with DataSift. Marketers always look for basic information about their customers and their related target markets, and this time it is Facebook that wants to help.
“Topic data has shown marketers what audiences are observant on Facebook about various subjects, events, brands and activities," Facebook said.
For example, “A business which offer a hair de-frizzing product can now see demographics on a people articulated about humidity’s effects on hair.”
As we know that most of Facebook’s information is private unlike Twitter (TWTR, Financial), Topic Data, which offers a privacy-safe approach, will be a great offering, because Facebook has often faced a lot of flak for exposing the private lives and details of its users to third parties. To safeguard personal info, Topic Data is anonymized, so brands can’t know accurately who said what.
Charges
Facebook has said in a statement that it’s not currently charging any money for access to its data, but this can be expected to change in the near future.
“This is because we want to react in response to interest that we’ve been getting from our marketers. They were asking us to provide useful insights to them to help generate more effective campaigns on and off of Facebook platform,” said Matthew Idema who is at the post of director of ads product marketing at Facebook.
Uses
The data received may also have its applications beyond marketing. It can be used for a range of research purposes, including product development. A fashion shoes company can learn what consumers are saying about their products on Facebook, and can use this information to improve their offerings, or to create an entirely new line of offering that would appeal to others.
A fashion merchandizer could become privy to this crucial information and can observe what clothing items its target audience are talking about and liking, and then decide which products to stock. In a nutshell, we can say that any brand can now see how their customers are interacting with and talking about their products, brand or industry, and it can be then used to measure brand sentiment.”
Final Thought
For now, this facility is accessible only to companies in the U.S. and U.K. However, like all of technology world's services, scalability is not an option to be ignored, and the services areas will continue to grow geographically. Facebook, which has been dealing with a lot of privacy issues, and has become sensitive about them, has always trailed Twitter when it comes to the matter of monetizing information for its business audiences. When we talk about in terms of privacy, however, Facebook has already said all the information used for topic data will be anonymous and aggregated, and it will not disclose any personally identifiable information, including its marketers and partners. We can say that it is indeed a good step for partners to find out if their audiences are observant on Facebook about various subjects, events, brands and activities.
