At the time of writing there were 23,308 people committed to quitting Facebook this coming Monday, and that number is bound to rise considerably over the weekend. The reason for this is because the social networking site is accused of having an unfair privacy policy, and although it does offer users a choice, these are restricted. As such, Facebook is facing a mutiny, but as potentially hundreds of thousands of people decide to leave the networking site, advertisers may decide to withdraw their funds from the venture too, leaving internet marketing missing a vital ingredient.
Internet Marketing
Since the launch of sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and Bebo, internet marketing executives have been trying to harness the potential revenue from a captive audience through advertising. When a user logs on to his or her account, certain sets of information are handed to the company and then that data is passed on to advertisers. Age, sex, location, likes and dislikes form part of a comprehensive cross section of many demographics desires, and are in effect a golden egg to advertisers. Without such information advertisers would be running a greater risk when trying to target the right consumers, and risk getting a bad return on their investment.
Online Marketing
The situation with the Facebook privacy settings is essentially a catch 22 for online marketing. If Facebook and other social networking sites continue to hand over data to advertisers, they will lose their once loyal users. If they choose to please the masses by keeping data private then the value of the users information would diminish considerably; for the time being anyway. The current problem with these social networking sites that are theoretically worth unimaginable sums of money is that they definitely have a value but they need to find a way of monetising users without sacrificing their personal data. It is hoped that new and improved privacy settings that will be implemented by Facebook will be enough of a compromise for the company to keep its customers, and the cash coming in from advertisers.
Related posts: