Facebook has been very good to us for many things. Reconnecting people with old friends from school. Giving a platform for groups of complete strangers to be organized & rallied together around a single cause. Opening that channel for marketers to add value and build relationships with customers through real, genuine interaction (I’ll expand on this in another post, though).
With all the recent changes Facebook announced at f8 this week, I often wonder: who are these changes really benefitting? Us, the casual user? Facebook, the profit-making corporation? Or is it the marketers?
Last week in class, I brought up the announcement about Google Wallet. There was two sides of it: the cool phone-swiping, cardless payment aspect, and the slightly more creepy now-every-store-you-shop-at-will-keep-track-of-your-identity-and-shopping-habits-in-order-to-deliver-personalized-advertising aspect. And now there’s two parts to the new Facebook updates: the scrapbook/life chronicle aspect, and the now-every-company-should-have-its-own-branded-(verb)-a-(noun)-app/Facebook gesture, for which it’ll only have to ask permission to do once.
And that’s the thing that gets me – the more we become passionate about our technology & social media, the more we get wrapped up in all the updates and “innovative” features, the more we invite Facebook and companies to burrow into our lives. I check into a restaurant on Foursquare – oh look, there’s my coupon for next time. I blog about a company – oh look, they’re emailing me because they had a Google alert on their name. I level up in a game – oh look, free stuff from a company. Where is the line drawn between my personal, offline, REAL life, one where I have control over my wants & needs and privacy – and one defined by materialism and marketing and branded actions? Is Facebook and the like erasing that line completely? Or does it even matter? Have we been destined as the generation that “grew up with Facebook,” and that is to say, without any acumen of privacy or oversharing?
I’d like to beg to differ, but in order for people to hear me, I’d have to post it on Facebook.
Zuck Dawg gazing upon his new masterpiece, Timeline
I know I'm probably just being paranoid, but this seems like a pretty good way to get yourself stalked and attacked.
