This is a followup post I wrote Saturday, called Social Privacy: Does It Exist? That piece was written to share my thoughts on our perception of privacy on the users’ end. This post is about the service/server side end. As you can probably tell at this point, I find it very interesting. I’d like to share my thoughts on the subject as it pertains to the “other side” responsibility to not share our data without our permission. This article by Mark Zuckerburg on The Washington Post broke today. Please give it a read when you’ve finished this. It just may validate my theory.
So we are all using Facebook, Twitter or something of that nature. But what for exactly? We use their service to connect with whom we would like to share our information with, it’s a warm & fuzzy happy go lucky, fun loving, sharing world and Facebook has made this possible because they care about helping people get connected. They want what we all want. Making the world a better place by providing a service which allows people to find each other and add value to each others lives’. I think there was much more truth to that in the very beginning before it grew to such a large amount of data, but now I don’t see how a bigger truth isn’t lingering in the background. Literally.
This place where we share our data with, Facebook, is nothing more or less than a recording industry. They are a business and they’ve all been playing our song for quite some time. To them, anything we share is a recording. Think of all the content you’ve provided over the years. All the hit records and the singles that have hit the virtual shelves. They are recording it and have the largest human behavioural habit pattern catalog known to mankind.
Recording our lives’ is something we have only done on a piece of paper in a journal or scrapbook in the past before the internet was around. We owned that piece of paper or laminated photo book. It was ours’ and unless we lost it or didn’t put it in a safe place, it never reached the eyes or got into the wrong hands of whom we didn’t want it to be seen by. It was usually locked up in a drawer or hidden in that special secret hiding place that we know no one would be able to find.
So now many of us have become very comfortable recording our lives’. Obviously Facebook has gained the largest volume of record to date. They have everything we share. Sure, we can view it, change it, and share more of it. But, have you ever thought about the fact we cannot get it back completely. It’s out there now and they have it. So what does this all mean for us all? Is there any reason we should be alarmed or outraged, even feeling a bit violated? I mean we did sign up, we did take the action to push it out there. But, what did we originally think would happen to our recordings then versus now, is what I’m seeing as the frustration of many in regards to this matter. Now that many have reached this boiling point, what would actually happen to the data if we really took a leap off the landscape and deleted our account completely? I would assume it would be pretty useless to them at that point, so I would hope to think it’s really gone. But think about this…
Let’s take a look at the reinvention and evolution of the advertising industry. It’s still a very important business even though it has gone through a profound evolution. Businesses will always need to find their customers. The most common ways used to be to advertise in newspapers, magazines, radio commercials and television. Now we have technology that has disrupted the model very effectively. We can fast forward, play over, block and consume the content (in most cases) that we only want to see.
So where does that leave businesses that need to find consumers? The old way isn’t working as it once did, and now we are the eyes and the ears, in a sense, of the Ad Industry. Our data, our recordings, Tweets and Facebook posts, what we click on and whom we interact with is what they need.
See, we have done two things here. We have been given the ability to not listen to traditional ads, and now we are the voice because we’ve recorded our lives’ and tuned out the recordings they used to serve us. In a sense, we’ve won that war. No longer will an ad have the same effect as you telling me, as a friend, where I should go to buy a new car, toaster oven or engagement ring. 
I think it’s worked out pretty well up until now. The new era has unleashed a new set of challenges we now “face”.
These businesses need our data to make decisions on how and where to do the advertising they still do, and more importantly to find out our habits, patterns and therefore what makes us decide what to buy and from whom. They need bigger ears and eyes. They must find us on these channels now. The old channels are rapidly dissolving more and more everyday. Even influence is a factor now. What users are influences others. It’s become a very tangled social web in which we live and now there is, and has been for quite some time, huge financial gain and opportunity to collect the records and sell it to whom needs it so that it can be used to for these businesses to grow.
The BIG Problem with that?…they’re not telling US that. They are confusing the process with things like Facebook Privacy controls that are not concise and clear. Opt-in or Opt out button would be really nice. Instead it’s a very confusing process which you have to spend quite a bit of time and even tutorial in order to get it set right. Even then some say it’s still shared. Who knows..
I do know we now live in a very short attention span world. I sure don’t have a problem taking a survey to help better a company to understand it’s consumer habits, but not when it’s running in the background. That’s where I believe we have the problem. That’s it, it’s greed and it’s wrong to do for anyone. As if this post wasn’t too long as it is, please take a look at Jason Calacanis deletion video of his Facebook account. It’s quite lengthly, but quite enlightening as well.
I would love your thoughts and take on this “other side” of Social Privacy I am calling Social Piracy, the recording of our lives’ sold to 3rd party companies or organizations without our knowledge in order to gain financial rewards. Have an experience or different take on the subject? Please let me know what you think. It’s a topic I never thought I would write about since everyone else has, but now this makes two posts Thanks for your time.
Respectfully, _DG
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