A Customer-first approach to Job Titles

Does your organization design job titles and specifications to place emphasis on the customer?  When considering the ability of different parts of your team to impact the experience of your customer, where are the points of pressure?

A commercial transaction is an experience, wrapped around a promise.  The value which is exchanged (monetary, utility, emotional) and the extent to which the transfer is well-balanced, affects the experience of the promise.  Over time, a brand's meaning is the sum of the promises made and kept.

People and organizations can make promises in different ways.  What levels of people your firm, or people on your team, have influence on the consumer experience?  Do they:

• Greet or interact with customers in person
• Answer inquiries on the phone or those that come in by email?
• On-board new team members?
• Decide on employee compensation, perks, or benefits?

The people who do any of the above are not just employees; these people can make, keep, and break promises.   Now think about the number of those people whose job title is coordinator, specialist, or assistant?  How many of them receive instruction from managers, directors, or VPs?

I recently came across a posting for a "Director of First Impressions."  Here's the line I liked best from the requisition:

"Candidates should only apply if they can provide the highest level of customer service, with a smile on their face, no matter what the position throws their way." 

To handle the unexpected, to be sure about your motivation and commitment to customer success?    It's not always easy to keep your promises - having people who take that seriously, and who know they are empowered and expected to do so, can make all the difference.  Don't waste an opporuntiy to think about how your next "Assistant" will delight a customer, and maybe even lead by example.

The Meta-Battle for SKUs

Apple's identity (account and Touch ID) stategy comes into focus here in this Chart via BusinessInsider.

The meta-battle is now: 

# of exclusive SKUs, Total SKUs, and ease of purchase.  Apple might have the digital content piece (apps, movies etc) but Amazon and Paypal have the physical (and second-hand) universe on lockdown.

TouchID certainly is going to help with ease of purchase, and the rest of the battle is: how can we get consumers to buy ____ with Apple.

Teen Attention Shifts to the Behavior Networks

USA Today reports on a non-story: Teens turn from Facebook to fresher social-media sites

Drawn to niche sites such as Foursquare and Tumblr, teens appear to be expanding beyond Facebook. According to market research firm YPulse, 18% of teens prefer to "check in" on Foursquare instead of Facebook, and 10% say Pinterest is a better site for browsing.

These behavior networks have experiences rapid growth largely because they ride atop identity networks like Facebook.  These networks do not challenge the core business of Facebook, particularly because: Facebook, and its advertising platform, are everywhere.  There are glimmers of what the Facebook Sponsored Stories will be on Zynga, while playing games like Words with Friends:

Facebook will know the future before you can Tweet it

What were you doing last night?  Mark Zuckerberg had a hackathon.  Oh yeah, and today his company went public.

I have been thinking about valuation of Facebook all week, and i think whatever the offering price is, it's wrong, and the GM announcement just made things worse by focusing on revenue in the Millions.  The valuation should not be  based on revenue.

Instead we are looking at the premiere testing ground for defining social expereiences and ad products across multiple channels based on the behavior and reactions of real users.  The future is clearly coming, where recommendations and votes of confidence from friends will be louder than advertising.  With the end of broadcast, and even the end of web portals,  attention is a strategic asset.  And Facebook has a boatload of attention, because we are addicted to news about other people.  

This need to gossip, and the need to share, is a basic human need- It's Brain Candy, according to Harvard researchers.

To be cute about my hypothesis:  Facebook will know the future, ship an awesome product and move on,  before you can Tweet it. 

Facebook is in a dominant market position to be able to take the attention people spend on the platform, across devices and all over the social web, to find out what works before any of their competitors, and with enough scale to stay ahead.  As long as they do not piss off users (the product being sold to advertisers) then the business is incredibly valuable.  I don't really know how to value it, but you must imagine some of these platforms competing with each other, and almost no one can compete with Facebook in this regard. 

It comparatively easy to build a behavior network to scale, but people are growing tired of joining new identity networks - they already have Facebook, or Linkedin, or Google,  and it is so easy to get traction by just riding over the top of that; consumers will begin to expect it.  Such a strategic advantage is incredibly valuable, and suggests that Facebook might even have a business when many of these other platforms just get boring.  Facebook will be the social layer people use - and that could echo for a decade or more.

Facebook keeps saying they are not trying to be a great company, they are trying to make a great product, and while the effects are similar the emphasis contained therein produces really remarkable results.  So don't worry about getting the valuation right, because they are going to ship a lot of code before anyone figures out the generational shift in behavior and advertising we're in, but I think Facebook might be the company that gets there first.

Facebook stock closed barely above the offer price - find me someone at Facebook who really cares about that, instead of shipping  a great product.  Their strategy? Culture as strategy.  Facebook tries to get people to enjoy but not flaunt their wealth and these norms suggest that inside Facebook is brewing...the next Facebook.

Behavior Networks and Identity Networks

Instagram's acquisition by Facebook illustrates how the tension between identity networks, and behavior networks will play out in the marketplace, and how it may not benefit users directly.  This divide pits sites like Pinterest and Instagram vs. Facebook, Twitter, Path, and others.

Identity networks, like Facebook and Linkedin, focus on You and managing connections to pieces of identity, and while you may have have wide-ranging conversations within such networks around content, which are key to communicating your identity, the profile remains the anchor point to an identity you care about. Facebook deserves credit for making this idea popular and easy to understand - forcing Google and Microsoft to change in many ways.  

Facebook's Connect and Open Graph initiatives show how crucial the concept of identity is to the Facebook model- the advertising Facebook sees in the future isn't customized by cookie pools, it's customized based on the open graph. It's not limited to Less and less of the meaning that users derive from being Facebook users will come from using Facebook.com and more and more will come from experiences enabled by the Facebook Platform. Facebook, as it extends the platform, is admitting that it cannot innovate fast enough at the edge to keep every user fully engaged - what they want is to have that user identified and authenticated, pulling their behavior into the Facebook ecosystem.

Thus, the edge of the platform, powered by identity, is where new user behaviors will emerge. These emergent groups of connections, I call Behavior Networks. They have several important properties.

1. Leverage an identity network to authenticate users - e.g. social sign in
2. An intentionally narrow feature set, the novelty of which self-selects new users.
3. User to user value exchange is based on behaviors - e.g. who you are on Pinterest is DEFINED by what you pin.
4. Nonlinear growth in user base enabled by the Identity Network.
5. Scale is the enemy of behavior networks, because they represent the end of novelty (2).

Behavior networks remain rooted in one style of behaving, and are key to a very specific context or action.  Instagram and Pinterest are in this category.  While relying to varying degrees on your identity (on Facebook, Twitter, etc)  your identity on these sites defines your behavior - if you never publish anything, you don't exist. No matter how many instgram photos you take, that's all the network says about you.

Test yourself, when was the last time you deleted an Instagram photo?  When was the last time you deleted a Facebook post?  I've done many of those things on Facebook, but I never worry about Instgram.

The real-time web is perfect for behavior networks.  All that matters is what you are doing- your behavior is your only identity but it doesn't live forever.

For these reasons, these behavior networks represent a challenge for marketers. Extending engagement beyond the behavior network - site traffic, conversions and so on - will be used to prove that the marketer's participation had some value. And this will require functionality a behavior network operator will be loathe to construct. All ROI metrics will come down to this: did the users engage further? Did they pin stuff and their friends bought it? The ROI analysis will require a channel linked to identity.  So as marketers we face the dilemma of proving the value of engagement beyond behavior networks, and these are uncertain times indeed.

My next two posts on this topic will deal with:

1. Path, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare: Can there be more than one identity network
2. How will the tension chnage the practice of marketing?

Burritos, and Guacamole, and Bikram- O MY!

Foursquare has a new video on their logged out Homepage which I have embedded below (HT AboutFoursquare). The video promises that you can find great burrito places to enjoy with friends, and  "Don't forget to work off that burrito by doing an hour of bikram yoga next door."

Challenge: think of something more gross than eating a big guac-filled burrito and then doing bikram yoga.  I did a little research on the subject and even Hot Yoga of Delaware specifically recommends against:

we recommend that you do not eat a big burrito right before class. In fact, you’ll probably be better off with no large meals for 2-3 hours prior to practice.

Here's the video:

Are there, perhaps, other recommendations that would be better?  How about a great boot camp class in the park and a post-workout smoothie? 

Hi! I want to learn more about foursquare! from foursquare on Vimeo.

Do Trade Shows Matter?

Peter Kafka of all things D wrote The Apple in The Room  in 2006 (also re-posted it this morning on Twitter), but with the rise of social media, it’s become more and more true.  Companies have an end around CES. 

Some have lamented the departure of Microsoft from the show.   If anything, Microsoft’s departure as the anchor of CES shows its decline but also how far behind the curve MS really can be.

Since companies create their own media channels, they have much more flexibility about when and how they communicate product news- both big and small. An age of real time and more transparent corporate comms also means companies can publish and shape a message all year long, at will.

The article's points about the smart devices, really the Internet of Things trend, have changed the important players. Meaningful, differentiating innovation – the kinds of WOW I WANT THAT features consumers want – happen so frequently outside the pavilion or dates of the show.  

CES used to be an event for the journalists to carry the message to consumers.  But now consumers don't need the journalists (not exclusively, anyway) to tell them what is cool this year.  Also,  important industry announcements are increasingly coming at places like TC Disrupt and the Launch conference. So yes, CES failed to keep pace with the industry but I am not sure it had a chance against the tide.

My experience at SXSW last year was very different from the previous year.  In 2010, it felt like being at the center of the universe and the cusp of very important trends.  At SXSW 2011, we saw more or less the continuation of the same trends, but the Interactive festival has gotten so crazy, so big, so commercial, I wonder if the big brand dollars that have flocked to the event have sapped it of some of the weirdness that made it great.  

And trade shows have been replaced by Brand Shows: the biggest games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty are now so large they have their own conferences. These events are media channels, concentrated pockets of support for the product, hungry for news.  The attendees are motivated and they want to BUY STUFF.  They are powerful message multipliers.  The scale and style of these kids of gatherings will vary by brand but if you have that, why wait for CES?

Options Tax Treatment Reminds us of Broken Incentives

From today's "But NObody Pays That" post on tax treatment for corporattuibs and the wealthy, those who can afford to manage their income for strategic tax avoidance:

“These options gave executives a highly leveraged bet that stock prices would rebound from their 2008 and 2009 lows, and are now rewarding them for rising tides rather than performance,” said Robert J. Jackson Jr., an associate professor of law at Columbia who worked as an adviser to the office that oversaw compensation of executives at companies receiving federal bailout money. “The tax code does nothing to ensure that these rewards go only to executives who have created sustainable long-term value.”

Yes, a highly leveraged bet.  Yes, paid off on the rise in stock prices  and yes rewarding execs who may or may nor have creted susainable long term value.  Thjose are all true.  I think the article unfarily targets Mel Karmazin, whose tenure with the embattled SiriusXM represents management of significant risks.  The mechanics of rising tides - which governemtns world-wide have been instrumental in rising -  do lift all boats, and it is troubling that we need the tides to rise in order to have the appearance of investor confidence.  As the markets freak out time and time again, what goal are we amanaging toward? Are we managing for value?  For whom?

The (mis)alignment of US Tax policy, compensation incentives, and the martket should not be an indictment of Karmazin or others like him.  The critique of the market and the way the few are able to profit from its gyrations remains. But let's examine our need for the apprarance of stability and confidence, for the appearance of growth?  Stroing products, made over the long term, producing customer value, are the way out, not the feckless consumption of lattes and Barbie dolls on credit.  It's a sad and despareate fact that we all need the market to appear to rise- and bailed out the global financial system to ensure it.

According to the Senate Joint Committee on Taxation there is $25 billion in revenue for the treasury at stake with these deductions - and the implicit subsidy from US Taxapayers to employers who use options for compensation is no fun at all. Balancing the budget probably won't happen a nickel here, a dime there - let's face it, $25 billion over 10 years is a drop in the bucket of trillions - but aligning the tax code in more productive ways could certainly help.

 http://nyti.ms/vx14m7

Apple Finances Start-up Costs to Manufactire the Future

Nice wrap up on SAI, from a Quora post about how apple uses its massive cash resources:

When new component technologies (touchscreens, chips, LED displays) first come out, they are very expensive to produce, and building a factory that can produce them in mass quantities is even more expensive. Oftentimes, the upfront capital expenditure can be so huge and the margins are small enough (and shrink over time as the component is rapidly commoditized) that the companies who would build these factories cannot raise sufficient investment capital to cover the costs.

...

Apple is not just crushing its rivals through superiority in design, Steve Jobs's deep experience in hardware mass production (early Apple, NeXT) has been brought to bear in creating an unrivaled exclusive supply chain of advanced technology literally years ahead of anyone else on the planet. If it feels like new Apple products appear futuristic, it is because Apple really is sending back technology from the future.

Reminds me of the Clarke's Third Law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -[Wikipedia]

Is Android really "open"?

Reading The dirty little secret about Google Android, I've been enjoying the insightful analysis of how Apple's decision to free the device from the restrictions of the carrier were key to the identity of the device, and seem more in keeping with what Google originally promised with the Nexus One.  

Unfortunately, the Nexus One flopped.  The non-Apple customers buy their wireless devices and service very differently.  Mass-market phones, even smart phones, need marketing spend behind them, and those campaigns are linked to carrier restrictions and modifications which compromise the "open" vision.  The upshot, according to the article:

the consequence of not putting any walls around your product is that both the good guys and the bad guys can do anything they want with it. And for Android, that means that it’s being manipulated, modified, and maimed by companies that care more about preserving their old business models than empowering people with the next great wave of computing devices. 

I think this rolls back into the S-Curve of technology adoption.  

[credit: Wikipedia]

As the market matures and a it becomes a mass market product,  smart phones and apps become both more standardized and more understandable for the average community.  We see and hear idiotic advertisements exhorting us to be "twin texting turbos" with the Droid 2.  And this is great for Verizon's bottom line, for marketers and developers launching Android apps, and for mobile web content growth.  But it basically sucks for the innovators who want to be able to get a great device and move from carrier to carrier in the US market.

Other perspectives: Nic Brisbourne of DFJEsprit writes

[T]he longevity of the app paradigm versus open web standards will depend in large measure on who wins the hardware battle.  Open standards at the software level probably will probably only prevail if hardware manufacturers with a PC mindset prevail over those with a preference for closed ecosystems...

Unfortunately, the principles of openness have been interpreted to mean an open app ecosystem, and haven't changed the economics of the closed carrier/device model in the US.  Google wants a big market for Android apps and as many users as possible, and that motivation is at cross-purposes with the open-ness that geeks want.

A man's reach should exceed his grasp: why Netflix killed Blockbuster

Blockbuster chief of digital strategy is quoted in Fast Company:

You can always say I wish I did X and not Y. But if you asked me in 2009 whether we'd be the only one in the mobile space selling movies other than Apple and whether we'd have Blockbuster On Demand--never in my wildest dreams would I have aimed this high. [emphasis is mine].

What's the point of a strategy if you can execute on it and pass your own dreams? No wonder my money is on Netflix FTW.

Help a millenial with experimental advertising!

Shelly Palmer provoked me to think about whether I am "too into technology to understand real business."  Yikes!

I'm sympathetic to the idea that many "social media" people live in a reality-exclusion zone where they only buy products from brands they can @message on Twitter.  On the other hand, the “real business” folks can probably wait it out, but more and more of them are starting to wonder.

I talked to a small outdoor advertising business owner who might not be ready…but he’s intrigued.  He gets online marketing and does aggressive SEM advertising. But social?

The shift to social marketing certainly made a splash but isn’t sustainable, really. In the early days of Twitter, most of the buzz about the promise of the service to transform marketing was being made by marketing people on Twitter.  Is the future of one-to-one, fragmented media a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps.

That being said, we’re starting to see the ways in which pure awareness advertising shifts into engaging digital and offline experiences that aggregate attention rather than interrupting a piece of content. 

Advertising remains real and necessary, but it will increasingly be built around producing perceived value in and of itself. Pepsi’s PepsiCo10 strategy to take Refresh one step further and start funding new tech entrepreneurs is an bold example, and even if it’s on the wrong side of Wannamaker’s 50%, at least some millennials may get jobs.

Steve Jobs, The KIN, and the power of No

“If you boat a lot, you're known as a boating enthusiast. I like to boat, but I just don't want to ever be referred to as a 'boating enthusiast'. I hope they call me 'a guy who likes to boat'.”- Mitch Hedberg

I read that Microsoft's new KIN Windows 7 phones, are "aimed at 15- to 30-year-olds who are social-networking enthusiasts."  Ew.  Never mind targeting teen interests in Glee, Justin Beiber, WWE, college, funny videos, or body spray - who describes a product this way even in a press junket?  Presumably they left the research out, or they'd have realized that 31% of their target demographic already plans to buy an iPhone.

It's shocking, really.  After so many years of getting it wrong you'd think someone could just do the opposite of all that and make a serious score!  Microsoft has been making mobile products longer than Apple has been making the iMac- it just so happens that few of Microsoft's products were very good.  When aQuantive was bought by Microsoft in 2007, my Razorfish colleagues and I collectively worried that we'd lose our Blackberry devices in favor of Windows Mobile "smartphones."  The worry was well-deserved; those who received them were usually miserable.

Microsoft proved unable to create the kind of extensible platform on its mobile devices that has made Windows dominant in the corporation and in the home.  While Windows may be too entrenched to be dislodged from either, it's stunning what Steve Jobs has been able to do in his return to Apple. 

And now, with the prominence of the iPod/iPhone/iPad as a platform, Apple's role as a "gatekeeper" to the platform is drawing a wave of anti-Jobs sentiment, centered around the perception that Apple is a draconian gatekeeper of its own platform.

Maybe so.  Is that so bad? Isn't it better than the sludge that Windows Mobile is? (I have not tried out Windows 7 Mobile so I reserve judgement for now). I believe that the power Steve Jobs wields most effectively is the power of No.  And what Microsoft, by trying to pack everything into every product it ships, has always been shackled to Yes, And... (well, their version of Yes, anyway).

No, that is too hard to use

No, that looks like crap

No, that feature sucks

No, that app doesn't belong in the app store

No, we don't talk to the press

No, I don't answer emails (actually I think Steve Jobs responding to email of late is like the ultimate blog/twitter account)

After all that NO, it's clear that the most important thing to Apple is to make awesome products that people love.  It's not ego, or even greed (except by association- great products cost $$$).  But Apple has transformed itself from a manufacturer of niche PCs that a few people love, to a mass-market CE company that makes products for millions more.  The masses expect Apple to stand behind every product decision and to contuniue to uphold exacting quality and usability standards.

Is that democratic?  Surely not- Steve Jobs is an admired autocrat. He's a sort of a benign autocrat, which  isn't all that bad  (see also the original Thirteen Colonies and "Salutary Neglect")  Strong, determined leaders in the autocratic model don't much care for input from you, or me, or anyone else.  If they stopped to ask what we wanted, we might choose the wrong thing.

As in the 1700s, this was all more or less OK until the colonists got wind of the the autocrat's real priorities- the intolerable acts were ones that benefited the sovereign else at the expense of the colonists.  Enter the rebellion.

Are we net beneficiaries of Steve Jobs' power of No or are we on the brink of Apple's decisions benefitting the company more than the base of users, developers, and accessory manufacturers?

Apple's power comes from protecting the user experience.  Whether you see that experience as stifled by an evil dictator or shaped by divine will is really about YOU not about Apple.  With the user at the center, the design decisions of an otherwise evil monarch are altruistic.  Right vs. left, republican vs. democrat- this is an interpretive exercise rather than a factual one.

Apple is facing an onslaught of ad-driven solutions, particularly if it releases always-on wifi and allows multiple apps to run simultaneously.  A successful ad model could be important to keeping developers afloat.  But the key to that monetization of the audience is the data about the audience, and strategically Apple needs this piece- to be the sole provider of such data and kill AdMob.

So Apple 's development process might be reduced to:

1. Protect the experience of the user
2. Protect the interests of the developer ecosystem except to the extent that it woulf harm 1
3. Serve the interests of shareholders/The Street except to the extent that there would be conflict with 1 or 2

No matter how many applications Steve Jobs or his employees arbitrarily deny from the app store, if people just love the damn thing, they'll think he's Jesus.

Success for Foursquare is in the Cloud

I enjoyed Caroline McCarthy's questions about Foursquare's sustainability.

But let's not limit the definition of success to the Foursquare product as it stands-the API is where the real action is.

Venue and advertiser innovation will drive the platform's success, as with Twitter.  Businesses and marketers can leverage the Foursquare platform to create engaging experiences wherever people gather, and they don't need to wait for Foursquare to make this a default behavior.

Marketers are dipping their toes in to the water of location-based social networking, using the game elements of Foursquare to enhance their marketing programs, but few are creating brand-relavent and ongoing experiences that add value for the user.

As users tune out broadcast messages, marketers will turn instead to memorable, high-ROI experiences in the real world that leverage Foursquare, or Yelp/Facebook checkins, or Gowalla, or the application we are all going to be using tomorrow.  Each of these is just another doorway to reach today's hyperconnected audience- and all their Foursquare friends.

Operational Transparency

In his Buzzmachine blog, Jeff Jarvis writes about a Continental Airlines choice of transparency over secrecy after flights were cancelled:

Continental is practicing operational transparency. It opened up information is already has to us, the customers, so we can be informed and empowered. This way, I’m not cursing the airline and its employees. I’m well aware that our flight might be canceled and that’s entirely out of Continental’s control, so I wouldn’t blame them. But every time this has happened in the past, I hated being in the dark; I hated being lied to by airlines; I simply want more information. And now an airline is giving it to me. Bravo for Continental.

Operational transparency is only possible when someone has sat down and calculated the benefit of the true information vs. the costs of its absence. Good on Continental in this case, and we should all look to say more when there is no serious competitive disadvantage to secrecy- hiding behind “approved messaging” will just keep your customers from taking your side.

Relationships: your ticket out of Social Media Slave Labor

Are social media sites the agents driving us all into slave labor creating the means for marketers to oppress us?  Or can marketers be smarter than that?

Instead, I would argue that only marketers who fail to create relationships need slaves.

The Internet as Playground and Factory conference explored these issues recently, and at first blush, an excerpt like this gives us all the willies, doesn't it?

Only a small fraction of the more than one billion Internet users create and add videos, photos, and mini-blog posts. The rest pay attention. They leave behind innumerable traces that speak to their interests, affiliations, likes and dislikes, and desires. Large corporations then profit from this interaction by collecting and selling this data.  Social participation is the oil of the digital economy. Today, communication is a mode of social production facilitated by new capitalist imperatives and it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between play, consumption and production, life and work, labor and non-labor. 

Am I a slave right now, blogging and tweeting and mentioning brand names and leaving a trail of data crumbs all over the interwebs?  True, all the data the "slaves" create is fodder for data-driven marketing. Tracking people across social media, .com properties, searches and video views, it all becomes the cloud that companies are seeking to profit from.

Many of these approaches create highly interesting optimization problems.  However, I would claim that we cannot reduce all marketing to an optimization problem.

1. You can't optimize awareness- if you want people everywhere to know what you are doing, this will cost you in terms of money, people, or time, or frequently all three.

2.Once a user finds you, marketing strategies must combine the use of personalized offers with actual relationships and content.  So no matter how many times you test your banner creative to see whether people who saw the "pizza hut and taco bell" video like your banner ad better than people who saw the "Peanut butter jelly time" clip from Family Guy, these correlations do not get people to like you.  They're just data. 

3. Data in marketing organization often reduces perceived uncertainty about a tactic without really proving it's the right strategy.  It's just a better use of money, but spending money without creating relationships is a first class ticket to lowermybills.com.

4. Optimization-driven marketing creates perceived value for middlemen and service providers, and moves dollars around between ad nbetworks, exchanges, publishers, advertsiwers, agencies and niche service providers:  it does create valuable relationships with customers.

The Human Relationships  forged when your product or sales force take care of the customer, however challenging, last longer than an ad campaign or an agency retainer agreement, and are forgiving of mistakes but not impervious.  It's a long-term value play.  Some companies play this game well, and many, many, do not.  Patience is a virtue.

Hat tip to @kcheyfitz for giving me something to think about this Sunday morning.

You keep using that word, Targeting- I do not think it means what you think it means

Dear, Mycriminaljusticecareers.com ad team,

REALLY?

I know you didn't mean to target me with your ad.  You did?  Hmmmm.

Ok, I'll play along.  I have read Rainbow Six (the BOOK) twice.  I have two legs and all my fingers. I am not averse to wearing riot gear and breaking up WTO protests.

Is it just me or is a Facebook ad for law enforcement taking the wrong approach by luring people in with the SWAT Team - literally enticing people to apply for law enforcement positions with all the cool weapons you can only get with lots of virtual gold in Mafia Wars or at that level of Doom II I could never reach? If this is really best accomplished THROUGH FACEBOOK then their ad inventory must be even cheaper than I thought.

The the kind of law enforcement assitance you're likely to get from Facebook is more along the lines of an SNL Sketch than anything else.

You know what, this ad is  hell of a lot better than a credit score ad or something from lowermybills.com, so I take it all back.

Sincerely,

Benjamin Bloom