Here’s a recap of yesterday’s Montreal Facebook Camp first session hosted by Thane Calder (). According to (), the fact is that Facebook exists and that the network reaches thousands of people, so marketers should go where there is an audience and that’s it. () added that Facebook is interesting because it does replicate the social interaction that we have offline. A fascinating point of view came from ( who is impressed by the impact of Facebook but doesn’t seems convinced for the moment on what Facebook could really bring in terms of an interesting way to advertise. ‘’Facebook a encore des devoirs à faire’’ de dire Stréliski, ‘’je ne suis pas encore séduit par la sirène, fasciné, mais pas encore convaincu, j’aime la sincérité, je ne le sais pas…, on a la conviction qu’il se passe quelquechose, je veux vivre l’histoire, pas la manquer, y se passe quelquechose, mais on ne sait pas quoi ?’’

Next question was about what are you doing as marketers for the moment on Facebook ? Most of the four panellists agreed that for the moment, marketers are watching it, looking at Facebook as a way to experiment. Vlad came with the idea that we should think about Facebook more like a media, ‘’we should come with an application, with a different mindset, then it will force us to respect people’’. Olivier Soussy for Radio-Canada, sees it on two points of view: first, ‘’on constate une migration de notre audience vers des sites ou le contenu est générer par les utilisateurs’’, secondly ‘’d’un point de vue commercial, on constate une pression à la baisse sur , il y a tellement d’inventaires de qualité sur le net, on est dans un marché de vendeurs de pub maintenant. Facebook devient un appel d’air au niveau publicitaire, il ne faut pas se tromper, il faut attendre, les taux de clics sont désastreux, le branding n’est pas possible, les gens sont intéressés par eux-mêmes sur FB (photos, amis, applications). ‘’ According to Olivier Soussy, there is an urgency to wait.

Next question was about targeting marketing. Vlad tells us that it is going to take a lot of tools and that is going to be hard to manage targeting for mass marketing. Again, everyone agrees on the fact that the quality and the quantity of the data is incredible but we don’t know how to use it, for the moment. So comes the difficulty to sell Facebook as advertising to our customers. Olivier Soussy adding that whatever the place, it just takes a good ad, it’s not about creation or design, it’s all about the right message sent to the right people.

As for the applications, Andrea Stairs (e-bay) educated us about , one is to show our friends what we have brought through e-bay. Someone from the audience asked if Radio-Canada, as the New York Times did, will come up with an application in the future. Answer is probably not, considering that SRC is a ‘’grosse machine’’ and that is hard to change things into large corporations. Jean-Jacques Stréliski also thinks that it is difficult with FB for the agencys because their revenue models are not made to advertise on Facebook. It is more the customers who want to be on Facebook.

In the end, the panel left us with many questions (more than answers) but since everything on Facebook is new and considering that , the future will probably give us much more answers.