Friday, April 23, 2010

Why Facebook scares the shit out of me...

Facebook, with the release of social plugins, has officially announced that they believe they are the Internet’s digital identity system*. How so? Their new social plugins — Like buttons, Personalized widgets, site-wide toolbars — all assume that you are logged into Facebook all the time. No one has ever made an assumption like that before, and it dramatically changes the game. Also, it’s scary because it’s probably true.

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Everyone wants traffic, and nobody has more of it than Facebook. So when Facebook announced “If you install our bug into your system, we’ll send you traffic”, publishers celebrated. Of course CNN wants their links in Facebook Newsfeeds. More traffic = more pageviews = higher CPMs to charge advertisers. Thanks to 20th century capitalism, everyone is chasing short-term metrics. Classic tragedy of the commons. Full story...

Don't miss:

  1. Privacy chiefs keep a wary eye on Facebook...
  2. Facebook feds go undercover: Report shows FBI...
  3. Think you can be anonymous online? Not really...
  4. What Facebook is for...
  5. Do you have a Facebook?
  6. Facebook gave millions of users' details to firms...

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