I have written before about my concern for Facebook’s lack of respect for it’s users privacy and preferences. It seems to think that the 400 people who use Facebook are raw materials, whose personal information can be sliced, diced and served up in demographically culled chunks to advertisers and direct marketers.
The latest is the abruptly announced decision to replace fan clubs with “like” preferences and to extend Facebook users ability to endorse or pan to other sites across the internet.
On first look, this doesn’t seem so bad. Social media users have been Digging and pointing thumbs up or down on multiple sites for some time now. It ios in keeping with one of social media’s most powerful attributes–the ability to decide based on what people like you think, rather than what advertisers claim or promise.
Here’s what Facebook said:
“To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we’ve changed the language for Pages from “Fan” to “Like.” We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.
The new ‘Like’ button will help users take advantage of and connect to the Community Pages Facebook is introducing–pages that are to serve as the ‘best collections of shared knowledge.
‘Liking’ a Facebook Page isn’t the same as ‘Liking’ a link, video, or status update a friend posts.
‘Liking a Page means you are connecting to that Page. When you connect to a Page, it will appear in your profile and you will appear on the Page as a person who likes that Page,’ Facebook says. ‘On the other hand, when you click “Like” on a piece of content that a friend posts, you are simply letting your friend know that you like it without leaving a comment.’
It sounds innocent enough. The catch is that what you like becomes part of your profile. And what marketers and advertisers find in your profile is fair game to send you messages that you probably don’t want in ways that you’ll probably find intrusive.
Every time you say you like or don’t like something, you are revealing a factoid that helps marketers put you into a usable box. If you like music, for example, that information can be sold to people who want to sell you music-related products. If you like sustainable energy products, the green machines can now buy your name and so on.
The internet has always been one huge marketplace. But it’s magic is that users have been able to get clean information easily and quickly using search and social tools.
It seems to me that Facebook is corrupting that marketplace. It’s “likes” tactic is nothing more than lipstick on a very ugly chicken. Perhaps, we might even call it a Trojan Chicken, whose belly is filled with little Direct Marketers waiting to invade the privacy of 400 million Facebook users, one consumer at a time.
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It sounds like you’re more upset that Facebook has to sell ads in order to provide a product to its users. Unless there’s another way to monetize web content that doesn’t involve ads (I assume you wouldn’t pay for a subscription), there’s no way around it
That said, ads that are tailored to the user are definitely better for the seller. What sort of ads would be preferable to the user?
In general I am almost as fatigued with the ‘click here if you like this’ or ‘rate this movie/story/CD/page’ or ‘you liked Godfather, so we recommend Godfather II’ almost as much as I’m fatigued with ‘you need a different username and password for every website in the world’.
OAuth etc are dealing with the second problem. I’m thinking down the road the ‘I like’ stuff goes away as the super-geniuses dealing with Big Data get better at analyzing page visit history, sentiment in comments, etc.
Then we’re pretty much all screwed. But I’ll go on record as saying I’m a fan of ‘The Venture Brothers’.
Hey Shel,
Been a long time, I hope all is well.
I have to respectfully disagree with your position on Facebook’s “like” button and here’s why:
1. Facebook has to make money, period. In fact, as a user of the site, I WANT them to make money because it guarantees the site’s survival. That’s important to me because I’ve come to view Facebook as an almost-essential social utility that helps me keep up to date on my friends. I know you’re not saying that Facebook shouldn’t be able to generate money, but rather should generate it in a different way. I’ll address that next.
2. For me, if I’m going to be forced to see any advertising at all, it might as well be relevant and in the right context. I’m not sure if Facebook has nailed the “context” part yet (Google definitely has, and I think Facebook could do the same if they make a move into search) but if they can at least make the ads more relevant to me and my interests, I’ll certainly be less irritated by them and could possibly click on them.
If you’re underlying worry is that by “liking” things across the web (and sending that data back to Facebook) Facebook could allow advertisers to target you on any site you might be visitng, well bad news: quantcast has already cracked that nut and you’re probably seeing an ad generated by an action you took on another site right now.
3. “Liking” something is an optional action. Facebook isn’t forcing you to divulge information about yourself. They’re certainly encouraging it but nobody has a gun to your head. Don’t “like” anything and they won’t know anymore about you today than you did yesterday — I’m comfortable with that. It gives me some responsibility, which I know some people might not like, but it at least gives me control.
Compare that to quantcast, where sites you know and trust are systematically “tagging” you based on actions you’ve taken there and on other sites. This happens without your knowledge or control. I’ll take a “Like” button any day of the week over this.
Bottom line: Facebook has to monetize through advertising (for the most part), if they can do it in a contextually relevant way, it’s a win in my mind.
The “Like” for Pages is exactly the same as the “Become a Fan” used to be. They just changed the wording and button styling, really.
I have been on a few of them and quite a few of the kids do not want mom or Dad on them and that bothers me. I have now joined a new one launching YourNight and I find the ability to seperate my connections and have them all in one place I find impressive.
I totally agree! I do think however that if Facebook would finally take privacy seriously and incorporate proper persona based segmenting that Facebook “likes” could become more powerful than Facebook itself.
Facebook’s appeal is dwindling but if they could provide users with good sentiment based search results – in my view that could change the entire game.
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