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Facebook is Your New Best Friend

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On the Second Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me, A Massive Invasion of Privacy…

Do you have ‘spending 2 hours a night on Facebook’ under ‘Activities’ in your personal information profile? In light of trying to lead our own free world, improve the work life balance and get out there and do something, we seem to be spending an awful lot of time on facebook?

Facebook

This week facebook rolled out its new privacy settings and this caused somewhat of a small uproar amongst people. “What? Now how am I supposed to spy on people’s photos?” On the surface, facebook is great for connecting with your friends, sending emails and sharing your photos with each other. What it’s really for is advertising! Never before has there been more targeted demographic advertising than facebook.

Your New Best Friend

Lovely LadiesFacebook knows what you’re a fan of, what you like, what activities you’re interested in, where you live, your gender, relationship status, employer and what you’ve been up to lately! The combination of all of your keyword inputs are used to generate advertising that is directed at you. I was a bit miffed to be offered not one but two lovely ladies courtesy of facebook.

Become a fan or join groups of the most obscure things and see what pops up on offer as an advertisement?

You might have changed your privacy settings or made custom friends lists so your boss can’t see you drinking beer through funnels on the weekend, but facebook will always know all!

Status Updates That Should be Banned

  • Anything containing ‘OMG’
  • Telling me you’ve just gone to the letterbox to check the mail
  • That you’re soooo bored
  • That you’ve just been to the shops
  • That you’re at the pub* (You’re at the pub! Out and about, not on facebook, enjoy it!)
  • Complaining about shit drivers on the freeway, while you’re using your cell phone to do a mobile  facebook update while you’re driving. Think about it.*
  • *All mobile uploads

Targeted Advertising

Become a FanBack to the target demographic advertising, anything you are a fan of, like, or activities you list then you’re falling into an advertising ‘category’. As far as facebook is concerned I enjoy breathing in, ice-creams named with a homosexual vibe, I have a yearning to be playing with my childhood toys, I watch too much television and I enjoy not being on fire. Advertise to that!

Before you hit me with the hypocrite stick, I quite enjoy facebook. I think it’s brilliant for keeping in touch with family and friends and especially friends overseas. It also has plenty of other pros;

  • Spying on school pals who’re bald & look like they’re 40
  • Checking up on school pals that are on their second marriage
  • Tagging your friends as farm animals
  • Realising that the vast majority of people don’t know how to spell

With all of this facebook privacy who-ha that has been going on keep things in check, remember what the service can do for you. You don’t need to divulge all of your personal information. You might have just been on an amazing vacation to Costa Rica but would you sit down in your lounge room with all of your ‘friends’ on facebook and show them your holiday snaps in a photo album?

Well you know that I long to play with Lego, enjoy not being on fire and smother everything in HP sauce. Tell me about your experience with facebook. You can leave a comment below, follow me on twitter, sign-up for the remaining 10 days of Christmas or ironically join the Facebook group.

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Written by Andrew

December 15th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

Posted in Start Here!, Work Life Balance

Tagged with , , , , , , ,

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  • According to the laser targeted ads on FB, I'm really into chicks with kids. I'm not sure the algorithm they used to figure that out, but I think I should be offended... To be fair... Women with kids are probably more offended that someone like me is being shoved their direction.

    I'm actually a fan of status updates involving pubs. It's like an open invitation for people to come buy me a drink. At least that's the way I intend it.
  • As with everything internerd and 'targeted' advertising you should try "at the pub on my birthday", that should get the free drinks rolling!
  • Based on what little I know about Facebook advertising, isn't it quite ineffective? I've heard people moan that they don't get many clickthroughs from it.
  • I think for as clever as facebook is and all of the personal information you offer up, if you put in 'male' and 'single' it disregards everything else and will just keep offering up 'Lovely Ladies' as per the above advert.
  • Great point Andrew. It really grinds my gears when people complain - "Oh Facebook changed its policy, now the world can see my private stuff!"

    Hello, why in the hell are you posting your "private stuff" to the internet if you don't want the internet to see it?! It's rather maddening. Your points are spot on. If we'd all just use a bit of common sense, I think we'll be fine.

    ;o) Great post.

    -Dena
  • If it's digital, it's public.
  • It does make me laugh! There's a couple of things that FB has that are a bit wrong, there's a privacy option to 'hide' your status updates from google indexing them. So if you don't have that ticked, and someone google's your name, in time it'll show you status update. It's all a bit 'big brother/1984' style!
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