Via The Verge
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For some time Facebook has studied your Likes, comments, and clicks
to help create better ads and new products, but soon, the company might
also track the location of your cursor on screen. Facebook analytics
chief Ken Rudin told The Wall Street Journal about several new measures
the company is testing meant to help improve its user-tracking, like
seeing how long you hover your cursor over an ad (and if you click it),
and evaluating if certain elements on screen are within view or are off
the page. New data gathered using these methods could help Facebook
create more engaging News Feed layouts and ads.
The Journal notes that
this kind of tracking is hardly uncommon, but until now, Facebook hadn't
gone this deep in its behavioral data measurement. Sites like
Shutterstock, for example, track how long users hover their cursors over
an image before deciding to buy it. Facebook is famous for its liberal use of A/B testing
to try out new products on consumers, but it's using the same method to
judge the efficacy of its new testing methods. "Facebook should know
within months whether it makes sense to incorporate the new data
collection into the business," reports the Journal.
Assuming Facebook's tests go
well, it shouldn't be long before our every flinch is tracked on the
site. So what might come next? Our eyeballs.