According to the (London) Telegraph, Facebook is moving forward with plans to take the information you've put on their site and transform it into "one of the world's largest research databases" for marketers.
HT: Challies.
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7 hours ago
1 comments:
Targeted marketing is a good and smart thing for both the consumer and the marketer. It is good for the person being marketed to because the marketer knows what you are interested in, therefore, they also know by elimination what you are not interested in. The consumers get less "junk mail" and only offers that are relevant to them.
Marketers already use deed information, survey information, magazine subscriptions, warranty surveys, credit scores, and a host of other information to try to target who is really interested in their product or service. It is simply a smart way to do business.
Ultimately, it saves the companies money to not waste time and resources on people who will never buy their product and only market to those who have a legitimate need or interest in what they have to offer.
Even more interesting is using that information for modeling purposes. For instance, if you drive a Ford Fusion, Ford knows your name and address. All they would have to do if this takes place is to match your name and address to your facebook account along with everyone else who owns Ford Fusions and see what similarities you have with other Fusion owners. For instance, if 80% are between the age of 35-45 and 78% are male, make $60K, etc, they have just identified their niche market and can ignore all the people in the world that don't match those demographics. So your information is not just used to market to you, it is used to make them more informed about who their customers are and how to find prospects. Marketing and data analytics is a fascinating business. People worry about privacy issues but as long as it is marketers who are using your information we really don't have anything to worry about. Just don't post your SS# or Bank Account Numbers and you'll be fine. What they are proposing has been done for years and is continually being refined. They just have a great database to tap into.
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