Are We On Our Way To a Big Brother Society?

Facebook Everywhere

By SAUL HANSELL

The most important bit of news at Facebook’s press conference yesterday was what they didn’t say out loud: Once the company gets the bugs out of its system for social ads on its own site, it will likely create a network to use its data to display advertising on other sites.

This could help solve the major dilemma of social networks: They have a lot of information about their users that can help advertisers find their best prospects. But users don’t respond well to ads on the network sites because they are so involved in reading about and communicating with their friends.

Two Facebook executives said yesterday that Facebook is indeed planning an ad network. They didn’t give details, and said the timing depends on how the first phase of the Social Ad system works.

Presumably, Facebook could offer two different sorts of ads. First, it could simply use its data about what users put on their profiles as part of a network that serves ads on other sites. Facebook claims that users have an incentive to tell the truth in their profiles because they are used mainly to communicate with their friends, not strangers. And so that data about age, location, education, work and interests can be quite reliable for advertisers.

Even more interesting, perhaps, Facebook may be able to append the implicit endorsement of friends to ads on this network. Imaging checking out the forecast on Weather.com, and you see a banner with a picture of your buddy Joe, saying Joe just bought a Canon digital camera from Amazon.com next to an ad for the latest Canon model. If someone else went to the same site, they might see an ad featuring a product recently endorsed by one of his or her friends.

There is no small number of technical challenges to make such a system work in high volume with the appropriate controls for private information. It doesn’t strike me as impossible however. It may well be creepy to some, just as Google’s ads on Gmail, which are linked to the topic of your conversations, make some users uncomfortable.

Still, one of the great races of our day is to see who will be able to find the best way to make money from placing ads on Web sites. Facebook’s combination of data about users and endorsements by friends make it a contender to watch.

TASK:

1.Point out the "dilemma of social networks".
2.Analyse how the article influences the reader´s opinion on social networks.
-Your choice-
either:
3a.Concerning to the questions "Are We  On Our Way To A Big Brother Society" , what do you think are the problems of the "social network generation" ? 
or:
3b. Write a letter to the editor. Comment on this article and also give your personal opinion on this topic.