Shrinking Violet: Facebook Fogey
The one thing that's really perplexed me about both school and work of late has been the Facebook phenomenon. $15 billion valuation for a social network erm, "platform?" Are you kidding me? Lately I've been considering deleting my account, just like I did with MySpace and Friendster, as the amount of "bacn" it generates is staggering.
On campus, I'd say about 50% of the shoulders I peer over in class or at the computer lab (strictly for research purposes) are hunched over the familiar blue and white interface. And a fellow veteran of the tech and startup scene made a consulting career for himself by explaining to old people that the kids don't use email anymore.
So of all the things that are making me feel old, I'd have to say the Facebook phenomenon is the one that cuts closest to home -- after all, it's kinda my job to be on top of this shit. And frankly, I just don't get it.Read more...But then again, maybe it's the fact that I'm watching Facebook in the tech trades so closely and reporting on it myself occasionally that's freaking me out. Because I doubt the kids at school are combing through the terms of service or have an inkling of just why the valuation is so high.
Why is Kara Swisher spending so much time at the Journal covering Zuckerberg? Because what Wall Street and Madison Avenue are salivating over is Facebook's power to provide the kind of marketing insight that makes big business drool.
But imagine if you could automate that kind of research? If you could know that the boss put some new-new wave, post-punk, faux-psychadelic indie band on his iLike app after checking them out at a show in Billyburg, sixteen of his Facebook friends added the same band within the week and would therefore be a good candidate for ads from the messenger bag maker of the month, well, a lot of coolhunters would be out of jobs.
And it's all because, unlike previous models that tried to segment people through information from subscription lists, credit reports and public records that are generated passively by consumers, social cliques and teen yearnings for conformity motivate the next generation to actively submit that information and more to their profiles. MySpace's problem is that teens can't spell -- Facebook solved that by tying your profile indellibly to your real name and otherwise massaging data input into more easily aggregated formats.
That's where the terms of service and privacy policy comes in. Basically, anything you submit to Facebook is theirs in near perpetuity. Videos? Photos? Text? Sensitive contact information? Thanks to pages of legalese, it's all pretty much fair game for Facebook to store, re-use and index to their heart's content.
I'm already paranoid enough of how big a role Google plays in my life, but at least Google's applications are useful. The most interesting feature on Facebook is the "news" feed from your friend network, and for that I have Twitter, which provides all the tools a new media douchebag really needs. So for now, I won't be getting serious about leveraging my Facebook presence.
On campus, I'd say about 50% of the shoulders I peer over in class or at the computer lab (strictly for research purposes) are hunched over the familiar blue and white interface. And a fellow veteran of the tech and startup scene made a consulting career for himself by explaining to old people that the kids don't use email anymore.
So of all the things that are making me feel old, I'd have to say the Facebook phenomenon is the one that cuts closest to home -- after all, it's kinda my job to be on top of this shit. And frankly, I just don't get it.Read more...But then again, maybe it's the fact that I'm watching Facebook in the tech trades so closely and reporting on it myself occasionally that's freaking me out. Because I doubt the kids at school are combing through the terms of service or have an inkling of just why the valuation is so high.
Why is Kara Swisher spending so much time at the Journal covering Zuckerberg? Because what Wall Street and Madison Avenue are salivating over is Facebook's power to provide the kind of marketing insight that makes big business drool.
But imagine if you could automate that kind of research? If you could know that the boss put some new-new wave, post-punk, faux-psychadelic indie band on his iLike app after checking them out at a show in Billyburg, sixteen of his Facebook friends added the same band within the week and would therefore be a good candidate for ads from the messenger bag maker of the month, well, a lot of coolhunters would be out of jobs.
And it's all because, unlike previous models that tried to segment people through information from subscription lists, credit reports and public records that are generated passively by consumers, social cliques and teen yearnings for conformity motivate the next generation to actively submit that information and more to their profiles. MySpace's problem is that teens can't spell -- Facebook solved that by tying your profile indellibly to your real name and otherwise massaging data input into more easily aggregated formats.
That's where the terms of service and privacy policy comes in. Basically, anything you submit to Facebook is theirs in near perpetuity. Videos? Photos? Text? Sensitive contact information? Thanks to pages of legalese, it's all pretty much fair game for Facebook to store, re-use and index to their heart's content.
I'm already paranoid enough of how big a role Google plays in my life, but at least Google's applications are useful. The most interesting feature on Facebook is the "news" feed from your friend network, and for that I have Twitter, which provides all the tools a new media douchebag really needs. So for now, I won't be getting serious about leveraging my Facebook presence.
