Social Networking

In summation of an earlier post, advertisements for gay social networks appearing on my profile led me to believe that Facebook thinks I’m gay.  But new information has arrived. In an article by techcrunch, it is reported that on Facebook,

If you click on an ad…then the same ad will be shown to all of your friends, who supposedly are two to ten times more likely to click on the ad than other people.

I therefore conclude that facebook does not think I’m gay, but rather facebook thinks all of you are gay.

When Facebook released the News Feed they didn’t decrease anyone’s privacy.  They simply showed everyone exactly what they were revealing.  Facebook made sharing data so easy that people didn’t realize what they were sharing.  But micromanaging data online makes people less likely to share.  So where’s the balance?
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Someone once asked what business McDonalds is in. The response was predictable, “they make burgers.” However the answer is very different:

“We are in the real estate business. The only reason we sell hamburgers is because they are the greatest producer of revenue from which our tenants can pay us rent.” ¹

Similarly, it can be asked what business Facebook is in and the subsequent response, “social networking,” would be misguided.

Facebook is an advertising platform that specializes in targeted advertising. They gather data about your usage on Facebook (and 40+ other sites) in order to server up advertising that you’re more likely to click on.

So here’s the kicker…today I saw an ad for “the fastest growing gay social network for gay men” on my Facebook profile. So this brings me to one of two conclusions: One, Facebook thinks I’m gay. Or Two, Facebook thinks that people who look at my profile are gay.

I don’t mind advertising as a means of sustaining freely available online services, but I never signed up for sexual or provocative advertising. And I’m not about to start clicking on it, so it’s a waste of my time and their money to show it to me.

I was once so proud of Facebook. But I have been perturbed by recent events. I currently work for a company whose primary business model is advertising. And I hope that my disgust with Facebook will help shape our companies future for everyone’s best interests.

1. http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=mcdonald’s

I think Facebook is the most depressing thing to happen to the world.

Everyone who uses Facebook will be familiar with the concept of Facebook friends, which I will call faciends in this entry (Feel free to use faciends openly in you day to day conversations). I have 97 faciends. I know, I know, some of you have 698 (Pradeepan), but bare with me. Of the 97 reported faciends of Adam, about 20 are still in my life outside of the Facebook world. Faciends represent about 1 in 7 (just a guess) of the people that I have been friends with in my life (Side note: that means that Pradeepan currently has more faciends than I have had friends). That means for every faciend I see in my list there are 6 friends I do not.

Don’t be misled…I love using Facebook to keep up with as many friends as possible, but do I really need that kind of daily reminder? How hard should we fight to maintain forgotten relationships? How hard should we fight to develop new ones? How many “close” friends make being “close” impossible? How few friends make someone feel lonely?