"The social network is making it easier for marketers to reach their targets."

Is Facebook Swallowing Up the Internet's Data?

As marketers and other Web site owners move their efforts to Facebook, they give up control over the valuable data that their users leave behind.

The data that we throw off as we move around the Web—browsing habits, navigation paths, origins and destinations—have always been enormously valuable for the sites we visit. The software to analyze Web traffic is a $500 million business and growing, dominated by Google, Adobe and IBM. Consulting and services to help people parse the data is another $150 million, by Gartner’s estimates.

But Facebook is eating into big swaths of the measured Web. As people spend a larger portion of their time on Facebook, the social network is developing tools that make it

easier for marketers to reach their targets, and customers are increasingly interested in engaging with brands on Facebook. In switching their emphasis to Facebook, marketers give up control over much of the valuable data that their users leave behind.

While Facebook can provide real names of people who “like” a product, it doesn’t provide data on what sites are sending traffic to a fan page, how long visitors are spending there and how they’re moving around inside it. No additional analytics services can be installed on Facebook pages.

“We are absolutely at the disposal of Facebook regarding these metrics,” says Chris Bowler, social media vice president at interactive ad agency Razorfish, which builds Facebook pages and freestanding websites for brands such as Axe and Carnival Cruise Lines. Facebook’s own advertising platform is roughly as sophisticated as the big networks’, but it’s harder to integrate with other data services. “We can’t connect the dots,” says Bowler.

Facebook now has 750 million users and reaches 43% of all Internet users worldwide, according to Alexa, up from 35% a year ago. Facebook now hosts perhaps 4 million fan pages, branded sites operated by companies, celebrities and enthusiasts.

One of them is the President of the United States. Barack Obama’s campaign website was attracting 8 million unique visitors per month as the 2008 election approached. This year Obama announced his reelection campaign on Facebook and has integrated Facebook’s registration system into barackobama.com. “We may never see another [freestanding] campaign website that gets that kind of traffic,” says Mindy Finn, a partner at social media advisory EngageDC. “All of that activity has just moved on to other platforms.”