ADS ON FACEBOOK
Just been tinkering around with Facebook’s advertising service and was pretty amazed how you can segment by age, location., political views etc. Pretty amazing / scary. We know this stuff happens all the time behind the scenes but it’s funny seeing it first hand and asking the question “Is a conservative more likely to buy my thing than a moderate?”. The simple truth is that any data you give is material that can help to put you in a box so you can be labeled and sold off to the highest bidder.
December 14th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Surprised that you were surprised by this. It’s always fairly easy to spot on facebook when you are being fished for your demographic.
Most people I know put a lot of very spurious information on their profile. The groups function is actually both more interesting and sinister as a concept because the segmentation is so tight. Quite what anyone would learn about me from the fact that I started a group called Lets bulldoze Stonehenge and put up Tennis courts in its place, and Only invited my friend Suzie to join I don’t know.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17966242640
There are some groups which are obviously exercises in data capture though such as
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2218674240
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8900080125
I think most people realise this and will switch to the next fad when it becomes too obviously corporate.