Facebook Puts Freeloader Users On Sale To Highest Bidders!
Mark Zuckerberg tried his darndest yesterday to shroud the mass commercialization of Facebook users’ private lives as empowering Facebookers so they “now have a way to connect with things they are passionate about,” i.e. products and businesses.
YAY? Have the world’s college students, and the tech blogosphere, really been clamoring to “friend” Coca-Cola and Blockbuster, and seeking ways to add dancing corporate mascots to their personal, supposedly private profiles.
NO! Nevertheless, a determined Zuckerberg plows on, reminding: We are an ad-supported service, guys, giving our prouduct away for free to users!
YES! And a $15 billion dollar valuation must be justified with a purported revolutionary advertising platform that puts a big, bad FOR SALE sign around the neck of every single Facebooker, down to the last 50 millionth one.
Facebook is, not surprisingly, disingenuous with its own users about how the new Zuckerberg dream marketer system will actually change the so-called “trusted” Facebook online social graph.
Zuckerberg and team routinely hail Facebook as mirroring how people interact in the real, offline world. REALLY?
Are Facebookers walking around with signs hawking neighborhood restaurants and pitching the latest Coca-Cola product introduction to every last one of their friends? NO! But Facebookers are now required to do so for Mark Zuckerberg, as quid-pro-quo for the high-priced bandwidth he is shelling out for to keep the vaunted social graph in action.
Facebook nevertheless says point blank to users: “Facebook will never sell any of your information AND You will always have control over your information and your experience AND Advertisers never have access to what social actions accompany their ads.” Such is NOT the Facebooker case, however.
The Facebook demo below clearly shows how a Facebooker is unwittingly used, personal photo and all, as an unpaid product spokesperson, sold by Facebook to a high-bidding marketer for the good of the Facebook bottom-line.
Facebook’s pitch for markters belies its disclaimers to users, showing how Facebook WILL tell advertisers “exactly who is engaging with your business, and how”:
Facebook’s robust database of authentic demographic information provides you deep understandings. From the performance of your social ads to the viral distribution rate of stories about your business, Facebook Insights helps you learn more about your target audience.
That target Facebook audience will soon have a deep understnding of Mark Zuckerberg’s intentions: THE FREE RIDE IS OVER!
MORE: Facebook To Users: We Know How YOU Live, Work, Play, Vote… and IAB Blasts FTC: Cookie Police Threaten $20 billion Internet Ad Economy, Ad-Tech Report