Facebook is leveraging a variety of social plugins, such as the “Like” button or Facebook Connect, to develop behavioral profiles on members, ClickZ reports. This development could offer valuable demographic info for Facebook marketers.
As the source notes, the social network can collect data on users who visit websites with these social plugins installed, even if they don't interact with these features. Information such as the URL, date and time of visit and web browser used are tied to each individual user's profile and stored for up to 90 days. This translates into potential Facebook profile/ demographic information attached to web visitors for marketers with the correlating social plugins.
While a Facebook spokesperson told the source it doesn't currently use this data to target advertisements, the information could prove to be invaluable if it were released to advertisers and website owners. They would be better able to tell who is visiting their websites and refine their content marketing efforts to suit the needs of their audiences. Moreover, marketers with the +1 social plugin can already get site visitor demographic info thanks to the +1 metrics being offered to Google Analytics users.
Brafton has reported that a substantial number of websites use these social incorporate social sharing features on their sites. According to a study conducted by Bright Edge, 47 percent of the top 10,000 websites actively link to Facebook via some sort of social plugin, and the +1 button is rapidly gaining adoption. Moreover, the number of websites integrating these plugins is on the rise, with Bright Edge reporting a 0.2 percent increase this year.
