It seems like over the last two months, everyone I know has been talking about Facebook. (I guess that’s not surprising in my particular locality; according to Wikipedia, Toronto has the largest concentration of Facebook users, numbering 50,000). Personally, I’ve stayed away from Facebook, not only because I perceive it to be the Web 2.0 (or are we on 3.0 by now?) version of MySpace, but because people’s expressions of excitement at having found long-lost acquaintances are exactly what turn me off. I’m not interested in reconnecting with people that I’ve lost touch with for years; there’s probably a legitimate reason for the loss of contact, and I’m happy letting sleeping dogs lie.
It occurred to me recently that there are far more valuable reasons for avoiding Facebook, however; a database that contains a ream of personal information about your interests, hobbies, friends, political affiliations, and so on is a ripe target for marketers interested in data mining the hell out of it. What weaselly marketing guy wouldn’t salivate at the thought of being able to correlate any arbitrary aspect of a user’s profile with another, and deliver targeted content or advertisements to that user? Or to resell that data to large corporations to be able to tailor advertising campaigns towards the psychology of a given market segment to induce members to buy a product? The possibilities are endless – and disturbing. Continue reading…
