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Jewish World Review Jan. 18, 2013 / 7 Shevat, 5773 With Graph Search, Facebook commoditizes you By Mark Kellner
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Facebook's January 15, 2013 announcement that it will offer a way to
search its "Graph" of information - a galaxy of data points gathered
from, well, you and me - has, I believe, significance beyond the
surface. Thought the announcement didn't send the firm's stock price
soaring that day, I do believe the firm has money on its mind.
Some background: the "Facebook Graph Search" service - which
co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said is the "third pillar" of the online
community -- is in its early stages. Only "hundreds of thousands" can
experience it today, with a controlled test period and eventual launch
to follow, the company said. So, for now, most of us just have to take
Facebook and its executives at their word for what Graph Search can
do, and that it will work.
The idea is simple: want to find friends who like the Washington
Nationals? Ask the question via Facebook and you'll find them, with
the people "closest" to you in terms of online relationships at the
top of the list. Then, you can invite any or all for a game-day party
or to join a rotisserie league or whatever.
Now, it's true, you could achieve the same sort of thing by actually,
well, talking to people you know in real life, but digitally it's more
fun, or so Facebook believes. And we can search for more kinds of
things, such as "pictures of Paris" taken by my friends, or "Mexican
restaurants in Arlington my friends like."
Facebook can do all this, the firm said, because we gave them the
data, the photos, the "likes," and so forth. When you "check in" at a
popular spot, Facebook knows, and when you "like" it, that's recorded,
too. Users may not think of this; we just imagine ourselves sharing
the details of our lives with friends. We do share, but, what happens
on Facebook pretty much stays on Facebook.
That said, the company took great pains to emphasize that you can mark
items as private, keeping them away from searching eyes. "Everyone on
Facebook who isn't blocked by you can search for you, but what they
can see in search results about you depends on what's shared with
them," the company said on a privacy information page related to Graph
Search. "Search results respect your privacy settings, whether it's
info you've shared, or posts with tags of you that others have
shared."
So, if you keep your Facebook circle very tight, with strict
limitations on who can see or contact you, then you have little to
worry about. Most of us, however, are rather public in what we share,
and therein lies the money angle.
Why? Again, it's the amount of data Facebook has already: "[t]here are
already more than a billion people, more than 240 billion photos and
more than a trillion connections," product management director Tom
Stocky and engineering director Lars Rasmussen said in a post on the
firm's "Newsroom" page.
There's gold in them thar data, to borrow a phrase: knowing what you
like, what you are looking for and how often you look for it can be a
real money-maker for marketers trying to target their products as
closely as possible. The scattershot approach of even "niche"
broadcast advertising (not everyone who watches the HGTV network, for
example, needs a folding cane to help them walk) will be even less
interesting now that there's all that information about you on
Facebook.
The trick here will be for marketers to make their Facebook pages as
friendly as possible: more "likes" means more visibility and entrée
into more networks. Looking for a dry cleaner in Laurel, Maryland? The
one you'll find, using Graph Search, will be one your friends like, or
that their friends like.
In way, this commoditizes us all: we're not just users, we're being,
well, used to make money. The Occupy Wall Street crowd may find that
distasteful, but it's called capitalism, and it's the implicit bargain
we strike when signing up for a social network and its services.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Mark Kellner has reported on technology for industry newspapers and magazines since 1983, and has been the computer columnist for The Washington Times since 1991.Comment by clicking here. © 2012, News World Communications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of The Washington Times. Visit the paper at http://www.washingtontimes.com |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
