It seems like over the last two months, everyone I know has been talking about Facebook. (I guess that’s not surprising in my particular locality; according to Wikipedia, Toronto has the largest concentration of Facebook users, numbering 50,000). Personally, I’ve stayed away from Facebook, not only because I perceive it to be the Web 2.0 (or are we on 3.0 by now?) version of MySpace, but because people’s expressions of excitement at having found long-lost acquaintances are exactly what turn me off. I’m not interested in reconnecting with people that I’ve lost touch with for years; there’s probably a legitimate reason for the loss of contact, and I’m happy letting sleeping dogs lie.
It occurred to me recently that there are far more valuable reasons for avoiding Facebook, however; a database that contains a ream of personal information about your interests, hobbies, friends, political affiliations, and so on is a ripe target for marketers interested in data mining the hell out of it. What weaselly marketing guy wouldn’t salivate at the thought of being able to correlate any arbitrary aspect of a user’s profile with another, and deliver targeted content or advertisements to that user? Or to resell that data to large corporations to be able to tailor advertising campaigns towards the psychology of a given market segment to induce members to buy a product? The possibilities are endless – and disturbing.
Then, last weekend, my fears were realized in this article in which Facebook’s VP of media sales outlines future plans. As the Globe often puts older articles under lock and key, I’ll quote the relevant section here:
In September, Facebook began allowing marketers to set up sponsored groups, where they can place ads, run contests and lead discussion topics in an effort to build a continuing two-way dialogue with their most loyal consumers.
“We decided from a revenue perspective that banners were the best way to monetize the site as we were growing,†said Mike Murphy, vice-president of media sales at Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook Inc.
“What we found is that in order to allow marketers to leverage the benefits that a social network can deliver, we needed to include integration and sponsored content as part of that so that marketers could create a daily dialogue with their most passionate users and have a feedback loop about how they engage.â€
Monetize and leverage to create a daily feedback loop – that’s exactly what I was afraid of. ($weasel.factor() = HIGH) Others have already flagged the privacy implications of having a database of 18 million users (with rich metadata about each of those users), particularly in conjunction with Facebook’s lax privacy profile which states, among other things, “We may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship.” And then, of course, is the ever-present question: what happens when Facebook is sold to a gigantic media conglomerate? Or if they are sold to Google? Last year I identified the dangers of outsourcing one’s critical applications to the Web, with Google as a particular example. It’d be far worse if one’s Facebook profile, for example, were to then be associated with one’s email, office application data, chat transcripts, and so on.
Not to overstate the case here, but to me, the overarching danger of all this Web 2.0 hype (jokes aside) is that we’re really building a gigantic data warehouse about people’s lives, all under the umbrella of “increased interactivity” (Total Information Awareness, anyone?) And that’s even scarier than the possibility of having a Grade 6 “girlfriend” try to reconnect with you on Facebook.
Very nice post! I'm now thinking of deleting my account to Facebook. I think that, like a lot of people, I created a Facebook account just have connections with old friends. In fact, I never really use Facebook, I'm just "in it". I think you have mentioned interesting points in your post. Facebook is certainly a huge data base for the guys in marketing. The question is: to what extent have they access to the personal data?
From the point of view that the facebook database is resource to be exploited by greedy marketeers is unfortunate. In a perfect world, we needn't have to hide who we are from others. If everyone in the world just treated each other with respect and understanding then this post wouldn't even have to to be written in the first place….That's the optimist me speaking.
Thanks everyone! Be Nice! 🙂
hi julian! ^note the website 😉
i find your comments insightful as your writing always is. i, also, am deeply disturbed about the privacy implications and the manipulation of our online presence to further the development of our post-society consumerist hellscape. but then again many would agree that i was already deeply disturbed.
to be fair though i would point out that it's not all bad. Facebook is very useful for connecting people that have lost touch. antisocial cynicism aside, not all connections lost are for the best. i live in complete isolation without telephonic devices (as you call them) of any kind and a few years ago lost access to the one email account i had been using since hotmail was launched (keylogging scum) and due to my luddite hermit ways subsequently lost touch with virtually everyone i know.
my siblings and their kids use facebook to keep track of one another and arrange family gatherings. they insisted i join as i am no longer reachable by any means other than email which i check infrequently. so now i am taking advantage of the opportunity to reconnect with friends because as i make tentative contact with what passes for civilization these days, i find that the only thing it has to offer that i truly miss are those friends.
the point (if there is one) that i am trying to make is i have lost touch with people due to change in lifestyle and priorities not from any loss of affection. i am admittedly stranger than most but many of the people i have not spoken with in several years i nonetheless still consider to be (for my part anyways) good friends. indeed i have a photo of andy,trish,alvin and kristy on my kitchen counter and one of you,steve ito and myself hangs on the wall in this room. i think of all these people with great fondness whenever i look at them (otherwise i would replace them with images of cats and/or cannabis).
while it was a simple matter to facebook invite most of these people, you i have resorted to googling. this has provided me with some information as to what's been happening in your life these past years but you'll be happy to know that you have successfully concealed your email address from the forces of evil. i know jack about twitter (i'm only now experimenting with facebook 3 years after you denounced it) so i'll leave you this message here trusting that your well designed website will alert you to the comment even though the post is ancient.
ps. on my page, i specifically made mention of how grand facebook was for reconnecting long lost friends in the hopes that you may one day read it and feel a somewhat reduced level of queasiness.