Zuckerberg needs your data. His business is built upon it. The most important thing to understand about Facebook is that you are not Facebook’s customer, you are its inventory. You are the product Facebook is selling. Facebook’s real customers are advertisers. You, as a Facebook member, are useful only because you can be packaged up and sold to advertisers. The more information Facebook can get from you, the more you are worth. In response, a FB spokesman told me: “I’m sorry you feel that way.
Lyons, on Facebook (via newsweek) (via blakeley)
Uh… How is Facebook different from any other publication - the one Lyons works for included - whose “real customers are advertisers?” Seems kind of hypocritical to me to write that in a publication that ostensibly makes its money off of advertising as well.
(via rickwebb)
I was thinking the same thing. The dirty little secret about sustainable media is that it has to be an effective platform for advertising. This has always been the case. Sure it’s fun to compare Facebook to the Matrix and users to human Duracells, but keep in mind that no one would read the analogy if there wasn’t an advertiser impressed by how many pageviews similar posts had received.
Why would social media be any different? You have to pay for relevant, meaningful content - whether it’s produced by a writer or a technology that delivers all the important (and not so important) updates from your closest friends and family members.
(via adamiss) (via mikehudack)
I’ll tell you why FB is different. Because FB trounces all over a line that all other businesses thoughtfully, and delicately, navigate. And because we provide the content that FB is advertising on. And because FB holds that content hostage. And because FB constantly changes the rules in dramatic ways without consulting us, and without warning.
Google, an ad-supported business, put the whole Buzz privacy fiasco behind them quickly because they spend a lot of time trying to convince people that they’re not evil. The merits of that argument are up for debate, but their efforts ultimately do pay off. With Google, the story was, “Wow. Google really blew that one.” With Facebook, the story is always, “Wow. FB is out to fuck us once again.”
Google understands that they have to serve both advertisers and consumers. Facebook does not give the impression that they’ve figured this out.
(via ericmortensen)
For the magic of publisher, reader and advertiser to work out (assume FB is the publisher here and users are the reader) there has to be a circle of trust between the three. If the readers need to trust the publisher and advertisers are not taking advantage of them. The advertiser needs to trusts the publisher and readers are not taking advantage of them. The publisher needs to trust the readers and the advertisers are not taking advantage of them.
Many publishing business can make a lot of money without the circle of trust, but usually for not all that long before the business starts to fall apart.
(via tedr)
