Facebook is planning to exploit the vast amount of personal information it holds on its 150m members by creating one of the world’s largest market research databases.
That’s how this Telegraph article kicks off in a report that was widely quoted by a ton of tech news sites and blogs. Sure enough, the article was based on an interview with Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook’s Global Markets Director and Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, so it had to be true, right?
Well, no.
AllFacebook’s Nick O’Neill, who had also penned a piece based on the Telegraph article, has since gotten in touch with the company’s communications department and cites Facebook representatives claiming that the piece is factually incorrect in its entirety and based on misinterpreted statements from Randi Zuckerberg.
We’ve reached out to the company for more insight on this.
Facebook has been experimenting with real-time polls in Davos this year and also have been rolling out the Engagement Ads system that is designed to leverage Facebook’s vast amount of data on users to improve targeted advertising, but claims that they’ll be turning the social network into one of the “world’s largest market research databases” seem to be a bit over the top in any case.
Update – here’s Facebook’s response:
“The polls run at the World Economic Forum were not part of a commercially available product for advertisers and should not be confused with Facebook’s Engagement Ads. At WEF, Facebook ran a series of polls to provide the Davos audience with real-time insight into the opinions of people outside of the conference. These polls were conducted on Facebook using internal tools.
Engagement Ads have been available since September and take five different forms. Most recently, Facebook began testing an Engagement Ad where advertisers can pose a question within the ad itself.
Facebook has, for many years, allowed the targeting of advertising in a non-personally identifiable way, based on profile attributes. Nothing has changed in our approach, and Facebook is committed, as always, to connecting users in a trusted environment.”
thanks for the info
It has always been easy for the truth to be obscured and misunderstood. It is their intellectual property but it is our data. Making money is important so is privacy.
Great post.Thanks
Facebook doing a good job, good post.
Good to know that they won’t compromise on privacy for $Money$.
Why should this statement be any more true?
O rly? Do you remember Beacon?
-Lou
You mean the last non-issue that nerds got pissy about?
If such a phrase was uttered in actuality: would the powers that be at Facebook really want this to be the way they are represented?
Hi thanks for the great post, however the term you used here is such trendy corporate speak:
“We’ve reached out to the company for more insight on this.”
Didn’t you e-mail, call or write them, or get in touch with them?
Sorry Robin, it’s just a pet peeve I guess I will have to live with
Keep up the great work.
First time I’ve ever been accused of corporate speak
I don’t see Facebook ever taking that route anyways. They have a great deal of pride and I don’t think they would ever sacrifice user experience to make some cash.
does beacon ring a bell?
Written by Robin, I guessed right.
You tend to leave a signature at the end, “in any case”, “as they say”, “for the birds”, etc.
Now you can’t leave any ransom notes
Nice non-answer by Facebook. I see half-truths in both the Telegraph story and the Facebook side of things.
Someone dig a little deeper!
Derek Poore seems right to me. I believe there are many missing details. I want someone to dig deeper as well. In economic times such as ours, a little persuasion is all it takes for integrity to be compromised.
Well…consider if they did sell our data to the highest bidder, I can guarantee there would be a mass exodus to some other platform. To me, that would be a hugely idiotic decision. I know I would delete my account.
Facebook has allowed users to target very specific demographics through the social ads for a while now. Age, gender, preference, relationship status, location and more are used to target those little (annoying) ads in the sidebar.
TC:Facebook “Not cashing In” {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/9uLqtuKoYQ_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”TC:Facebook “Not cashing In” ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/gDazIIDzBs”}}}
It seems that this is simply another in what’s becoming a long list of reasons why so-called mainstream media is no longer a reliable source of information.
Annoying ads? I don’t see any ads on any site. Look and you shall find!
Facebook SHOULD leverage the vast amount of personal data it stores to allow marketers to target their campaigns more effectively, on-line and off-line. Here’s why it makes sense:
1) Advertising from Facebook impressions alone (Social Ads, Engagement Ads, Display, etc..), will hardly unlock but a fraction of the true economic value of all that targeting data.
2) Behavioral and audience networks have proven the viability of targeting users beyond the confines of a single domain and reach them when a specific ad message is more valuable to them.
3) Credit card companies and data aggregators such as Lexis-Nexis already own far more private and sensitive data about individual purchasing behavior, health and personal finances than Facebook and have built huge businesses of trading that data and selling it to corporations and the government.
Would I mind if my credit card processor knew to offer me deals on backpacking gear (Facebook “knows” I am into that) instead of Alaskan cruises I will never be interested in? Not a bit.
Hats off to Facebook for gathering all that great info, what’s wrong in putting it to good use? Looks like people want to use the data – they just don’t want to be part of it. Free rider problem?
Facebook clearly should be investigating the market opportunity identified by the Telegraph. Focus groups market is about $3 billion WW. FB could compete very successfully in this space against companies like TNS/Greenfield.
I agree with posters who note the lack of clarity in FB’s denial. They really only say this is not an advert effort, which it clearly does not need to be.
Market research is not about identifying individuals, nor is it about using/tagging every individual in a user base. It is about predicting from a sample what a population will do.
FB can super easily develop immensely rich user panels from users who will *volunteer* to participate based on any one of many currently used incentive schemes.
FB can then use aggregated user information from these results to both help companies buying its research (primary purpose), and to gain insights about response patterns of small, targetable aggregates of users across the entire FB population. Cross-analysis of sampled research data with FB’s current interests/groups data is likely to be hugely synergistic. TNS has real problems.
There is no significant threat to FB users in all this. WIth proper setup, many will view their participation as a benefit of being a FB user. FB will not operate at the user-specific level because companies cannot target products and messages so narrowly.
Longer-term, the predictive information FB gains will provide mechanisms to enhance many other key services such as search, product recommendations, and optimized ad placements at other sites (e.g. YouTube).
Google has a chink in its armor as of today. It can not currently generate this type of predictive information — which is distinctly different from links analyses.
I give FB a lot of credit for this. If they develop it right, they can get into a market with good monetization opportunities, and long-term significant strategic opportunities.
Written and posted very quickly so forgive me any typos and awkwardness.
anon
I’ve heard that the creation of the “world’s largest market research database” IS their business model and the main reason that Peter Thiel invested very early on into the project. I guess that FB hasn’t been really talkative about this db as it would definitely tarnish their image among their users. Having said that, I’ve been telling most of friends who use FB about this and most of them reply “so what? I don’t care if someone’s cashing on the data I create..”
I would not say that this idea of Facebook to have world’s largest market research database is not feasible but sounds very difficult, if this happens it will be one of the greatest achievement. Good Luck!
It will be interesting to see how facebook maintains its growing commercialization without infringing on its users “private” information too much. Theoretically and if designed/implemented correctly, fb can be used to generate a more concise marketing scheme that benefits everyone. However, it’s not a bad idea to stay up to date with this personal data protection/knowledge site.