Mark Zuckerberg, after initially refusing to testify before Congress has finally agreed due to the pressure on his company to answer questions. The biggest issue facing the social media giant isn’t the fact that a third party accessed lot of data on users, it’s that Facebook has been collecting too much information on what we do online that, frankly, is none of its business.
If you go to settings on your Facebook page you can download the data that Facebook has on you and it’s a lot, especially if you’re an Android user. Facebook uses YOUR data to make money, a lot of money while we get ads on our Facebook feed. The more people that find out about it, the more people are going to leave Facebook which is why the stock has tumbled in recent days.
While having information on users allows sites to serve us more relevant ads having too much data, like all our phone calls and text messages, is too much, especially when you’re using the data to make money off of us.
Now let’s take a step back for a minute. Remember when Facebook was telling us how brands absolutely needed to be on Facebook? Then when it was reported that organic reach was almost nonexistent Facebook changed gears and told us we had to advertise on their site. Well, I have compared clients ads on general sites with Facebook’s and Facebook is no better although it’s more costly.
Now where are all the social media experts? [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””] People like Jay, Guy and Gary, who enhanced their personal brands by telling us we had to use social media marketing?[/inlinetweet] Did you hear a “we were wrong” from any of them? [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””] Of course not because their inflated ego’s are driven by the sheep who follow them on Twitter.[/inlinetweet]
The truth is nobody knows what the future holds for social media. My guess is that they will be a part of the Internet, but not a big of part as they had hoped. Facebook still has a lot of people who use its site but recent data indicates that they may have reached their peak.
Some marketers were smart enough to see this coming, but too many others went over the cliff like lemmings. A sad state of marketing talent.
