We all remember the movie that made Mark Zuckerberg famous. It was called “The Social Network” and it was all about how he turned someone else’s idea into The Facebook as we know it today. As far as social networking goes, Facebook is the king. No site is more social. No site has a larger network. It is the premier social network on the planet. But the website’s latest moves leave me to scratch my head and wonder if it is still a social network, or an advertising network.
For those who don’t know, Facebook is launching a newly styled profile they call Timelines. You can see a demo here. Basically, Facebook wants you to share everything on their network. That’s right, absolutely everything about you. Look at the example for instance. Here is all the information that is made available in the example Timeline:
Name
Occupation and place of work
University and area of study
Place you live
Marital status and spouses name
Picture of yourself
All of your latest activity on Facebook
All of your friends
Photos you are in
Everything you have publicly liked
Maps you have created
Pictures you have posted
Recent friend connections
Anyone who mentions you by name on Facebook and how
All the places you have visited
Coworker friends
And here’s the best part, what they call social apps, or in their words, “The movies you quote. The songs you have on repeat. The activities you love. Now there’s a new class of social apps that let you express who you are through all the things you do.” Read: all your activity are belong to us.
How far your last run was, how long it took you and your exact route by GPS coordinates
All the movies you watch
All the books you read
All the songs you listen to
All the videos you have viewed
All the places you have ever run
And that is just the example profile. There are other social apps to track and publicize every little thing you say, do or think. Now, one as to wonder, why is all of this information made public? Well, the answer is it is not. You have control over who sees it. So obviously with this much information about you available online, most people will keep their info to their friends and families.
Now I would ask, don’t your friends and families already know this about you? Is there anything here that is new? Do they even care? I use Facebook, and I can tell you one thing, I don’t care what anyone is doing on Facebook. I really don’t. And don’t flatter yourself, none of your friends care what you are doing either. Facebook is an ego-driven website. People want to feel popular, important and liked. More people can feel more popular, more important and more liked if they share more information about how cool they are and how awesome their lives are.
So Facebook has created this monster of pride-driven people who want nothing more than to generously share everything about their lives if it makes them look cool. So now on top of all that information, Facebook also knows everything you say on Facebook. Every update, every comment, all of it.
Now here’s something to think about: what is Facebook doing with all that information? I can tell you from their privacy policy. Now that’s an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one:
“We use the information we receive about you in connection with the services and features we provide to you and other users like your friends, the advertisers that purchase ads on the site, and the developers that build the games, applications, and websites you use.”
Say no more. You can see the rest here if you want. Hmmm…Facebook can use your information in connection with the services and features they provide to you through advertisers. How reassuring. At least I can say that isn’t a terrible thing. I would be happy to only see ads I actually cared about for things relevant to me. That means no more dating sites, c’mon people, I’m a married man.
Now thing about this. Facebook knows everything there is to know about you. And the more social apps you use, the more information they know about you. They can use this information to make the most incredible and amazing advertising network on planet earth. First of all, it targets abotu 25% of the population (which is very debatable) and second of all, it tells you everything you need to know about them.
So say I am an advertiser. My product is a treadmill. I could target my ad to various demographics as before, but I could also target only those users who have been out jogging, have read a book about fitness and recently viewed the Ok-Go treadmill music video. Yup, they could do that. Pretty neat stuff if you are an advertiser.
So don’t be fooled for one second. Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg don’t care in the slightest about social networking, connecting people or innovating online communications. They care about their upcoming IPO and how much money they can make. And they want that to be a whole lot of money. How can they do that? Give Google a run for their money.
Think about it. With Google, the only thing you’ve got in targeting your ads is the search term the person uses. That doesn’t give you much to go on. Facebook would give you infinitely more targeting options. Advertisers would see much better returns and conversion rates. They would leave Google for Facebook. Facebook’s advertising revenue could rival what Google is currently doing…which is billions by the way.
Now ask yourself, who could rival them? Only Google gets the kind of traffic Facebook does, and Facebook would be a much more attractive advertising network than Google if you are an advertiser. And no other social network has near the membership of Facebook. Google+ is still small potatoes. I just hope enough people wake up in time to realize what Facebook is really doing and leave so that I can soon. Other social networks aren’t very social for me if all my friends are on Facebook and I’m alone somewhere else. The sooner they switch, the sooner I can, and I’ll be glad to. You should too.
