Mind Your Information
3 December 2007Do you write a lot of interests on Facebook? Do you share your current location?
I’m amazed how much information people put on social networking sites like Facebook.
I try to keep things private and now I am even happier with that decision.
If you are sharing a lot about yourself, then you are indirectly helping companies target you with ads. Here’s a snippet from the Wall Street Journal:
Ads for companies’ coming events show up in the news feeds of people who are in their target audience. (Ads in the news feeds have a gray background and are marked as sponsored.) Companies can either pay per click or per page view. The minimum cost is $5 per day.
Ms. Puri says she plans to run Social Ads soon and expects they will be what gets “boots through the door.” Facebook has identified 60 people in Palo Alto and nearby Menlo Park that have claimed Indian food as an interest. Being able to reach those 60 people, she says, is “more powerful than any [traditional] advertising I could ever do.”
Read the full article here.
And for more, read about the recent Beacon fiasco.
One Response to “Mind Your Information”
Its interesting that companies like Facebook and Google can profit on their users sharing information. Specifically that means the user is their product, and the more information they can get their users to share, the more valuable their product is.
But that seems to create a large incentive for, you know…evil.
By RohoMech on Dec 3, 2007