Assorted Afflatuses

After a successful first day, I had adopted a very sanguine forecast for my Facebook advertisements. Then the weekend arrived. On Friday Facebook gave me over 30,000 impressions, a solid dozen of which were clicked on by users. Strictly speaking that makes for a dismal click-through rate of about 0.024 per cent, but considering the fact that Facebook displays my ad to the entire country, 0.024 seems a reasonably good rate. Saturday, however, proved less successful, with only 3,000 impressions and not a single click-through. Today does not look fantastic either, with only 2,100 served so far.

When first I saw those statistics, I reasoned that the drop off in impressions stemmed from a sharp decline in Facebook usage during the weekend. That prognostication, though, was without any evidence. So, I set about running a few Google searches.

I never found a dossier or white paper detailing the day-to-day usage patterns of Facebook users, but I did find a very interesting informal study written by a PhD student that examined Facebook trends at his college. Among his finds, the vast majority of Facebook users who categorized themselves as "liberal" considered Harry Potter their favorite book, whereas those who called themselves "conservative" listed the Bible as their favorite. It also seemed telling that the self-described liberals tended to list George Orwell's 1984 as a favorite, while the celebrated dystopian novel did not even make it into the top ten among self-labeled conservatives.

Also according to the study, the Facebook users surveyed were less likely to share their academic concentration than their relationship status. The former strikes me as far less personal or revealing than the latter.

All in all, an interesting read for anyone with any interest in Facebook trends.