A while back, Facebook decided it wanted to try something new to connect companies and brands to ordinary people. Where profiles had been lists of favorite movies, books, bands, quotes and other assorted fun tidbits, they were now to turn into a page full of links to interests. Virtually without regard for privacy, Facebook linked every interest someone had punched into their profile, into a link to a page created as a 'collective' for all things to do with that interest. At the same time, they extended this policy to status updates as well, where an update mentioning a certain interest would allow it to be linked on a collective page the exact same way as profile interests are.
This sounds ideal in theory. Making sure that lots of people get connected through shared interests. People able to get updates on their favorite bands or movies from a single page where all the information gathered and shared by others in status updates and the like. But the reality of it didn't go off without a hitch. People with interests like drawing suddenly found themselves linked to pages about graffiti, and people who were previously set on protecting their status updates from being shared with anyone but their friends, saw their messages appear on collective pages anyway, opening them up to comments, both positive and negative, from other Facebook users.
To make matters worse for loyal Facebook users, this move wasn't done with their user experience in mind. What Facebook really wanted, was to collect more cohesive data for companies to be able to search. To pick through looking for ways to target an audience more specifically fitted to their product or service.
To an extent, this already happened with normal advertisements on Facebook. Being from The Netherlands netted me an advertisement on housing in my country. As well as a website dedicated to cheap women's clothing, also operating from my home country, which suggests information about my location and my gender were combined to provide me with a link to cutesy little dresses. This was just the one time I checked on a browser not my own, as I normally have my own browser locked tightly and no advertisements have been able to penatrate my defenses on Facebook or elsewhere, yet. So I can only imagine what other Facebook advertisements the website has in store for me. What information they leech off my profile, which is technically supposed to be locked to everyone except added friends, and how they use it for third party advertisements.
It's clear that companies have by now recognized the potential social media websites like Facebook carry. Facebook advertisements aren't cheap to buy in, a lot of the costs usually hanging on the amount of clicks you get. Why? Because getting a lot of clicks tends to be guaranteed when posting an ad on Facebook. According to the website's own statistics, Facebook has over 400 million active users, who together spend over 500 billion minutes on Facebook EVERY MONTH.
These staggering numbers have caused more and more websites and web-based companies to link themselves to Facebook's platform. More and more often you can find a link on any given website, to 'like' something for your Facebook friends, automatically linking everyone receiving your updates on their news feed, to the website, part of that website, post or product you liked. Imagine the amount of people you can reach once one person clicks 'like' on a product of yours. Not to mention the chance of people seeing their friend 'liked' something, being interested in the same sort of things, being a lot bigger when they've all added each other over shared experiences, shared interests and the like.
It is a system with a lot of potential. Sadly, it's mostly interesting for companies trying to get people interested in their products or services. Generally speaking, the user experience for the average Facebook user has not particularly improved with these changes to Facebook's way of dealing with their personal information. The question now becomes: how much of your privacy must you accept to give up on, the moment you simply sign up for a social networking website to do just that: connect with friends, family and other loved ones? How much invasion of your browsing experience do you have to allow, just on the off chance someone might throw an advertisement at you that both interests you, and WASN'T something you would have gone looking for yourself through search engines or simply in stores or by asking friends?
In the race to make money off social networking services on the internet, what should the companies behind those websites be most concerned with? The profit third party applications make off their users and any of the information gathered from those users? Or the users themselves, and the pleasurable experience they have, using the website to network in peace?
This sounds ideal in theory. Making sure that lots of people get connected through shared interests. People able to get updates on their favorite bands or movies from a single page where all the information gathered and shared by others in status updates and the like. But the reality of it didn't go off without a hitch. People with interests like drawing suddenly found themselves linked to pages about graffiti, and people who were previously set on protecting their status updates from being shared with anyone but their friends, saw their messages appear on collective pages anyway, opening them up to comments, both positive and negative, from other Facebook users.
To make matters worse for loyal Facebook users, this move wasn't done with their user experience in mind. What Facebook really wanted, was to collect more cohesive data for companies to be able to search. To pick through looking for ways to target an audience more specifically fitted to their product or service.
To an extent, this already happened with normal advertisements on Facebook. Being from The Netherlands netted me an advertisement on housing in my country. As well as a website dedicated to cheap women's clothing, also operating from my home country, which suggests information about my location and my gender were combined to provide me with a link to cutesy little dresses. This was just the one time I checked on a browser not my own, as I normally have my own browser locked tightly and no advertisements have been able to penatrate my defenses on Facebook or elsewhere, yet. So I can only imagine what other Facebook advertisements the website has in store for me. What information they leech off my profile, which is technically supposed to be locked to everyone except added friends, and how they use it for third party advertisements.
It's clear that companies have by now recognized the potential social media websites like Facebook carry. Facebook advertisements aren't cheap to buy in, a lot of the costs usually hanging on the amount of clicks you get. Why? Because getting a lot of clicks tends to be guaranteed when posting an ad on Facebook. According to the website's own statistics, Facebook has over 400 million active users, who together spend over 500 billion minutes on Facebook EVERY MONTH.
These staggering numbers have caused more and more websites and web-based companies to link themselves to Facebook's platform. More and more often you can find a link on any given website, to 'like' something for your Facebook friends, automatically linking everyone receiving your updates on their news feed, to the website, part of that website, post or product you liked. Imagine the amount of people you can reach once one person clicks 'like' on a product of yours. Not to mention the chance of people seeing their friend 'liked' something, being interested in the same sort of things, being a lot bigger when they've all added each other over shared experiences, shared interests and the like.
It is a system with a lot of potential. Sadly, it's mostly interesting for companies trying to get people interested in their products or services. Generally speaking, the user experience for the average Facebook user has not particularly improved with these changes to Facebook's way of dealing with their personal information. The question now becomes: how much of your privacy must you accept to give up on, the moment you simply sign up for a social networking website to do just that: connect with friends, family and other loved ones? How much invasion of your browsing experience do you have to allow, just on the off chance someone might throw an advertisement at you that both interests you, and WASN'T something you would have gone looking for yourself through search engines or simply in stores or by asking friends?
In the race to make money off social networking services on the internet, what should the companies behind those websites be most concerned with? The profit third party applications make off their users and any of the information gathered from those users? Or the users themselves, and the pleasurable experience they have, using the website to network in peace?
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