10 Jul FriendRank – In Soviet Russia Google ranks YOU
If Google can have its say, advertising inside Social Networks is about to change. Google has put off the social advertising realm for long enough. You have heard of PageRank, well now there is Google FriendRank.
Googles latest patent will attempt to put a “rank” on you. Yes, YOU. The patent explains that they will use this algorithm to identify the key influencers in a network. This will then serve as the basis to serve ads upon.
What kinds of data might the Google Friend Rank Algorithm use to determine that you are a key influencer?
- # of Friends
- # of comments
- # of articles published
- # of networks user is in
- amount of time you have been apart of a network
- Demographic Data – Age, Sex, Location etc.
- Which groups you are apart of
- Rate at which people befriend you
Google is the king of delivering targeted ads, so it really is no surprise to me that they are developing an algorithm to do such a thing. I honestly wondered what took them so long. I have a feeling, however, that this will not sit well with the community. The implementation of targeted ads on Facebook has received a lot of resistance and I am sure FriendRank will not be any different.
How do you feel about this? Is this too big brotherish? Should users be able to partake in ‘social networking’ without having to worry about someone targeting an Ad based on their user data?
