| This is the trap. This is what FB employees keep telling themselves everyday. This has to work. It just makes sense. You can keep saying the data is valuable. No one is going to question that it is. We all have imaginations. And advertisers will be curious. They will try advertising on FB. But there's just a big difference in human behavior in the two examples I gave. They are different. Not because I can make argument based on reason for the difference. But because it's what the facts show. There is a long history to this that predates the web. You might say it's been thoroughly tested. So, you can make all the arguments you want that people should behave a certain way, and maybe you draw on examples of your own behavior or that of others you know, but when it comes down to making money and growing like Google does, it matters more what people actually do in real life. As opposed to how we think they should behave. Yellow pages and photo-albums are things that have been around for a very long time, long before the web. If people looking at photos (FB) are at the same time looking for products and services, then why didn't photo-albums before the web have heaps of advertising in them? The answer is because there was a different book where it was more appropriate to advertise. Read the article on the MIT or Harvard blog again. What you are describing, especially a tactic like image analysis, is exactly the type of approach he is saying is just too invasive. This kind of approach to advertising removes anonymity and violates people's privacy when it's counterintuitive to do so, according to the article. |