Facebook vs. the Man
It is said that Facebook is the place to meet friends. It is a place where people can connect. It changes the way we communicate by linking us to people we may not usually communicate with, and allowing them to see what is often very personal parts of our lives. It fosters an online community where relationships can be rekindled or formed. On the other hand, it is said that capitalism is a divider, separating those who have from those who have not. These two notions of conservative individuals and the community could clash in the near future on Facebook. Facebook is a private entity, a company that needs to turn a profit on a yearly basis. Having achieved the critical mass, Facebook is not only a place for people, it could potentially be the place for advertisers. However, people view their facebook as a sort of personal space, and resent the intrusion of advertisers. In a recent New York Times article that touches on the encroachment of advertisers on precious facebook space, Facebook Advertising director Sheryl Sandberg states that “We are trying to provide the antidote for the consumer rebellion against interruptive advertising,”
This antidote are the small ads on the side bars of any facebook page. Users can become “fans” of certain brands or bands or people that facebook thinks you will like, based on algorithms that analyze your usage. Fine. Those are easy to ignore right?
However, in an article from Wired.com Facebook’s Tim Kendall said that
“Marketers will be able to pay to accelerate usage they find valuable, to dial up and down actions that people take on applications, as part of the Social Ads program. For instance, News Feed uses an algorithm to communicate a users actions to the friends who would find it most interesting. Marketers will be able to pay for increased or enhanced distribution above and beyond what News Feed already provides.”
This means that Facebook will, in the future, be manipulating your likes and dislikes into endorsements for certain things. What does this mean for the community? I suspect that this will not be popular with facebook users and will make the facebook experience less authentic than it previously was.
