Today Facebook, Tomorrow the World
- By Ryan Singel
- April 23, 2010 |
- 2:41 pm |
- Categories: Advertising, Social Media
With a dizzying array of announcements this week, it seems almost inevitable that the web will become, at least for the near future, an extension of Facebook. Like it or not.
In some ways it’s a great development, making it simpler to connect what you read, watch and listen to. But there’s a nagging suspicion that when Facebook says it’s simply reacting to changing norms about how public we want our lives to be, that it’s actually forging that condition, not reacting to it.
And when I say forging, I intend both meanings of the word.
With a few deft maneuvers, Facebook is aiming to make itself the center of the internet, the central repository and publisher of what users like and do online. Facebook’s new tendrils will likely give what is already the world’s largest social network enough data to compete with Google for billions from advertisers who are hungry to spend their ad dollars on ads they can target specifically.
Facebook’s main lever to get all this data funneled to them is a simple “I Like” button, which websites can embed on their pages with very little effort. When a user clicks on that button, they signal to Facebook to add their vote on their user stream that they are a fan of this NFL player, this romantic comedy or that blog. Websites that embed some smart metadata (geared mostly for Facebook) into their pages let Facebook know what kind of thing a user likes, so Facebook can automatically add it to the relevant section of that person’s profile — with a link back to the original site.
Sites can also choose to install a sharing toolbar that sits at the bottom of your browser while you are on your site, or an even larger widget that shows what you and your friends are currently doing on Facebook — and with the “Like” button — around the net.
The setup makes it simple for users logged into Facebook to update their profiles and broadcast their activities to the world (liking something, including a political or religious group, like many parts of all Facebook profiles these days, is public information, no matter how you configure privacy settings.)
Logged-in Facebook users will also be transmitting information about their travels around the net to Facebook servers whenever they visit a page deploying the Like button, regardless of whether they actually click that button or not. Facebook also plans to transmit user data to some web services ahead of their visit — so that when you visit the site, it’s “instantly personalized.” In practice, this means that if you are new to the music site Pandora, they’ll have a custom station waiting for you based on the music you’ve liked in your profile.
While such tracking happens with third-party ad networks, they don’t know your name or anything about you other than where you go on the net. Facebook has far more to connect your browsing information to. Perhaps the closest analog is Google’s creepy Web History which tracks you around the web and records every URL you visit, but that system only works for people who install the Google Toolbar and who don’t unclick the “Web History” button when they create a Google account. That system, along with your search history, are also separate from Google’s ad tracking system, which doesn’t know your name or who your friends are.
Certainly, this sets Facebook in some competition with Google, especially with AdSense, which is Google’s ad platform that publishers use to put ads on their sites.
But reports that Facebook has “won” the web are laughable, especially given the numbers Google put up this month, with more than $6 billion in revenue over the first 3 months of the year. Moreover, the bulk of Google’s ad revenue comes from “contextual” ads, which rely on the contents of a web page or search query. It’s far from clear that targeted ads — even ones based on deep profiles — would do better than the ads on Google’s search page, even if Facebook eventually thinks it can build a search engine whose rankings are set via the data it collects from users.
Facebook built much of this easy-to-use system on “open” standards, as WebMonkey’s Michael Calore reports, even as it sucks the data into a closed community. But those standards are used almost exclusively by Facebook, and ignore the work that’s been done by others to create universally understandable meta-data.
Moreover, the Like button feeds exclusively to Facebook. If your primary identity on the net is at LinkedIn or Google or MySpace or god forbid, on your own domain, this button does you no good. Facebook didn’t build this architecture to make the net better, it built it to make Facebook money.
You can opt out of some of this through Facebook’s increasingly arcane privacy settings, though most won’t do anything to stop Facebook’s relentless push to make people’s profiles public.
And at least until someone comes up with a universal “like” button that feeds your votes to the place you want it to go, the web will increasingly become an extension of Facebook. The question for many in the days to come is whether you are actually using Facebook to keep in touch with your friends and family, or whether Facebook is just using you.
See Also:
- Facebook Tags Everyone at F8 with RFID Chips
- Facebook F8 Conference Leaves Developers Wanting More
- Facebook Shows Off New Tools to Socialize the Entire Web
- 8 Months Late, MySpace Unveils Its Own Application Platform
- Rogue Marketers Can Mine Your Info on Facebook
- Facebook Patents Social Network Feeds, Raising Innovation Worries
- Google Takes On Facebook, Twitter With ‘Buzz’
- Your Facebook Profile Makes Marketers’ Dreams Come True
- Facebook Doesn’t Get It: Users Want Control, Not Voting Privileges
- Big Companies Dominate Facebook
- Why Your Website Is Now Just a Facebook Application
- Facebook Is Always Watching You
- The Future Is Social, Not Search, Facebook COO Says
where’s the button to “like” this article?
@ilblissli The like button is about 4 inches to up ad to the right of your post.
So why doesn’t some one slap together an open source like button?
I am jack’s complete lack of enthusiasm.
It would be great, although this upgrade in Facebook means bringing more thugs in it.
@MrBungNugget
I am Jack’s inflamed sense of rejection: How could you use me like that, Facebook?
I love how Wired references the “open-source knowledge” and “web help” site “Webmonkey” which for years tried to auto-install malware on every visit, constantly contains infected Flash video & ads and … oh, yeah… also happens to be their [Wired] sister site.
If you’re stupid enough to have enough personal information readily available on Facebook that you would actually worry if it WERE made public, then it’s probably too late for your privacy anyway.
Use your heads, people: Its an internet-accessible database of user information. They’re essentially using you as pawns to collect data to use for targeted marketing and to sell data lists of user habits to other companies who essentially do the same thing. If it’s not government “assisted” by now, it likely soon will be…. but that’s not to say you should be afraid of it.
You should simply not put your real birth date, address, maybe even the correct spelling of your name, your phone number, etc. on the site. Use it for messaging and that’s it.
Don’t expect there to ever be a “private cove” where you can share your entire life’s happenings for ever other second of the day that someone isn’t going to tap like a data goldmine.
Even though I found the article very interesting, the headline and it’s connotations make me feel uncomfortable. I would change that!
I went on a site the other day and saw what other users liked. What fb intends with this update is not so much expand news feed but enhance the way we interact with other sites. Weird at first though smart in that most fb users are already comfortable seeing likes and comments on news feed. We can only hope their intentions are good. What’s FB’s slogan again?
When it comes to choose between your country of origin and your adoptive country in a sport competition, the resolution should be: may the better win!
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/cho-yung-tea-review-where-to-buy-cho-yung-tea-2203061.html
Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!
People should not be lulled into a sense of “Worldly Companionship” and “Social Togetherness” through social media sites such as Facebook. People need to physically interact and mingle with community by leaving your computer off and detaching from the net for periods durning your day. Losing human interaction is creating social misfits who do not see the world with clear vision and direction. Facebook does not have a face. They do not have a way to contact them, they do not want to be contacted, they want you to behave as they see fit, and jump when told to jump. While you waste your days not connecting with friends through Facebook, the owners of Facebook Waste time not producing anything that will benefit the World, but de-value the human condition to that of an ant. Raise your kids, play with your kids, don’t let a faceless point on the internet raise them. Teach them how to be social instead of sending them instructions through email. What we really should be doing is putting a “dis-like facebook in my face” button on your pages, and not sending them any useful information they will use against you in the future. Nuff Said
I deleted my friends on Facebook, after my personal friends list became public knowledge! Who the f@&k seens my mobile phone list? No one, because it’s private! Just a BS attempt to make more connections! F8@k em, now it’s just a ghost profile for people to email me, I never log into it! Also, deleted myspace (WTF was I thinking) and hotmail and gmail’s - GONE! F@&K em all - if friends want to see me, they can email or call! Get off these sites peoples, the friends aren’t real - and my life has only been better since I left them all behind!
Hey! Facebook! Leave that cloud alone!