Raise your mouse if you belong to Facebook.
I thought so. Any more the question isn't who's on Facebook, it's who isn't. (And that's got implications for the Cool Table, but that's another post.) Everyone is hooked into some Web 2.0 social media app and why not? It's cool, it's popular, it's easy, and it's free.
And given that free thing, how do they make their money? Yeah, there's advertising and some sites have apps that make money through sales or subscriptions. But, when you look at the ads, most of them look like those cheap-o Google AdSense boxes that earn pennies. Facebook is estimated to be worth in the billions. It can't be from the ads.
Psst. Come here. Let me tell you how.
Marketing information.
Yeah, information about you, how you live, what you wear, who you have sex with, where you travel, what you eat and drink and where you like to do it, and, best of all, you also tell them who your friends are so they can combine that information into larger categories. Facebook knows you better and has much more interesting information about you than your Mom or Uncle Sam does.
Think about it.
Remember all that profile information you've filled out with school and movies and TV shows and religion and sexual orientation and availability. And, all those pictures! Think about the marketing information in those pictures. You even name names in some of the photos. There you are with your posse at the Stadium for the big football game - what's everyone wearing, what are they drinking, what kind of haircuts and styles, any tattoos? Oh, and some wedding pictures. How many guests? Sitdown dinner or buffet? And think about all those silly What Famous Movie Character Are You Most Like or My Favorite Precious Stones or fill in the blank with a consumer preference questionnaire disguised as a game?
And, best of all, you tell me your network. I can link you to your "friends" and see how similar and how different you are from each one. I can determine which ones you talk to the most and those you don't and then look at the pictures to see if something's going on - maybe you don't play with "friends" who are older than you or who went to high school with you, but then went to a different college.
Now, all of this strikes you as fairly innocent and innocuous. So what? So, they can see the pictures from my graduation party. Big deal.
Yeah, big deal. Marketing companies are paying millions of dollars for profiles of Facebook (and other social media sites) users and their demographics and psychographics, plus a ton of social network information that was not available in the past. They can target you with the precision of a laser guided missle.
As an old persuasion guy I can tell you that I wish I'd had Facebook 10 years ago or longer when I was doing large scale persuasion campaigns on a wide variety of health and safety behaviors. If I could have operated with Facebook-based marketing information it would have been shooting fish in a barrel.
See, Facebook gives me information with both great detail and great organization. I can get a virtual movie of your life from all the information you've posted on it over the years and I can combine your movie with movies from your friends and their friends and their friends . . . and you get the picture.
Now, think about the hip Web 2.0 operation President Barack Obama has been running. He's been letting you connect with him and share a lot of information about yourself for a long time. He really appreciates your financial contributions, but if you don't, that's okay. With all the marketing information he's collecting on you, he'll find another way to solicit money from you. He might even share your information with other kindred spirits.
And, the best part of all of this is that you gave Facebook permission to use your information this way for free.
The web is an interesting, new, and different communication channel. Sure, like all the old channels - print, radio, TV - it connects people, source and receiver, so it's nothing new in that regard. But, it's a channel that allows receivers to push and share so much of themselves without realizing it is all being saved, collected, aggregated, and analyzed.
And you thought you were just having fun with your friends.
