The Beginning of the End of Facebook Twitter

I have been com­ment­ing about the cul­tural and social impact of social net­works as well as the exploita­tion of people’s exhi­bi­tion­ism by the busi­ness model applied by social net­works. Face­book a 21st Cen­tury Night­mare dis­cusses some of the bleak aspects of social networking.

Inter­est­ingly, some of the more restric­tive coun­tries when it comes to free­dom of expres­sions, such as Iran,  have now started to take mea­sures to block Face­book in their coun­tries. Obvi­ously the cen­sor­ship is never a mea­sure of strength nor will it work on the long run.

On the other side, politi­cians have noticed the impor­tance of Social Net­works as com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools and they use them a sim­i­larly uncrit­i­cal way as the fooled crowds, even worse: they are abused to serve as mag­nets, as good exam­ples to drag peo­ple into those net­works. This week on the news it was men­tioned that Barack Obama had some 6.5 Mil­lion con­tacts on Face­book and that Nico­las Sarkozy, the French Pres­i­dent has made it to over 100 000.

Here is the con­tra­dic­tion: Pub­lic Inter­est is to pro­tect peo­ple from neg­a­tive effects of social net­work­ing; pub­lic people’s inter­est seems to be to use these net­works to build per­sonal pop­u­lar­ity. I am not claim­ing that the exam­ple of Iran should be copied, all to the con­trary, but I am not claim­ing either, that to blindly fol­low Pres­i­dents into social net­works is a smart move.

What does Barack Obama or Nico­las Sarkozy know about Face­book, Social net­works or the Inter­net in gen­eral? My guess is: they have no clue. Their pub­lic image is man­aged by peo­ple who are paid to build their pub­lic image and to use about all means to achieve that goal.

Their first shot was good: a smart cam­paign can help to improve elec­toral results. Now that’s great! How about if the wind turns and that crowd of 6.5 mil­lion peo­ple start turn­ing against Barack Obama? I won­der how much free­dom of expres­sion will then remain with Face­book USA.

My guess is, that at that point, pres­i­dents will start draw­ing people’s atten­tion to the neg­a­tive effects of Face­book and oth­ers, to min­i­mize the impact and they will count on the fact that peo­ple will for­get about the use made of social net­works to get into the power posi­tion in the first place.

We are not yet there but be sure, in a near future, pub­lic peo­ple will have to dis­so­ci­ate from the poli­cies of Social Net­works and claim, that we are all in the same boat and that we have all been abused, cheated or at least that we have not been made aware of the dan­gers inher­ent to the busi­ness and secu­rity model of Social Networks.

A recent Aus­tralian Study claims that the use of Face­book by employ­ees dur­ing work­ing hours increases pro­duc­tiv­ity … pro­vided the time spent does not exceed 20% of the work­ing hours! The study does not spec­ify how those 20% are made up for …

In France a recent report sug­gests that Face­book, Twit­ter and friends are a great source of infor­ma­tion for crim­i­nals, thieves and pedophiles. This sounds rather a rea­son­able as assump­tion con­sid­er­ing the kind of infor­ma­tion peo­ple stick to social networks.

Imag­ine: Your Pro­file indi­cates that you are sin­gle, liv­ing in a given town (your address can eas­ily be found in the Phone­book) and you Tweeter that you are just leav­ing for the air­port to fly from Athens to Rio. Dur­ing your tripp you keep your con­tacts informed about your trip, places vis­ited and peo­ple met … great! Every­one knows, you are in Brazil and days away from home. Imag­ine the rest of the story.

Infor­ma­tion is like a knife: you can use it to cure or to kill.

Social Net­works build their pop­u­lar­ity on the exhi­bi­tion­ism of their users. The more you uncover, the more behav­ioral deduc­tions are drawn and the more inter­est­ing the social net­work becomes for adver­tis­ers. The infor­ma­tion is not only used by Face­book and or its adver­tis­ers but also by peo­ple who may not be well intended.

Some of the main dan­gers are linked to pro­files and pic­tures: iden­tity theft and pedophilia.

Based on all the per­sonal infor­ma­tion peo­ple give away, it becomes easy to abuse pro­files for ille­gal purposes.

The increas­ing num­ber of reports in the daily news about secu­rity issues on Face­book and other social net­works as well as the increas­ing num­ber of reported iden­tity theft or crim­i­nal­ity in rela­tion to con­tent loaded to social net­works will start to cre­ate fear, inse­cu­rity and peo­ple will either turn away from social net­works or restrict the flow of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The con­se­quence for social net­works is fatal since they are built exactly on the exten­sive pub­li­ca­tion of per­sonal data and exhibitionism.

Can you trust social networks?

Sure you can: trust that a social net­work is not here to nei­ther pro­tect your data nor your interest.

The trust issue is a real issue, also for Face­book. Increas­ing aggres­sive adver­tis­ing does not strengthen the trust users have into the net­work even if Inter­net users know how not to click on typ­i­cal ads links. Adver­tis­ing in such a “trusted” envi­ron­ment is a del­i­cate mat­ter and have you noticed, nobody wants to be the adver­tiser? Com­pa­nies play the social net­work­ing game with­out push­ing for con­sump­tion but to build good­will. Good­will increas­ingly stands in con­tra­dic­tion to push mar­ket­ing as iden­ti­fi­able eco­nomic inter­est jeop­ar­dizes trust.

Face­book is now look­ing at mon­e­tiz­ing the net­work in another way: a pay­ment sys­tem where you buy coupons or chips or what­ever the cur­rency will be called to … play online. Social gam­ing is a fast grow­ing indus­try and a cut on the gam­ing turnover looks like a lucra­tive alter­na­tive to advertising.

Face­book is not offi­cially telling you to go gam­ing, how­ever if you want to game on Face­book, you will pass through their bank to get the chips to play.

Let the dreams come true and let’s just imag­ine and dream of the bright future. Here is what it could look like:

Facts: One of Facebook’s largest appli­ca­tion devel­oper Zynga report­edly makes some $100 Mil­lion a year on games, most from face­book appli­ca­tions. Some 42 Mil­lion active Face­book mem­bers play their games monthly, for exam­ple Poker. Zynga makes the money when peo­ple con­vert cash to chips and this is the mar­ket Face­book report­edly is inter­ested in.

Sup­pose: Sup­pose a Casino with 42 Mil­lion monthly vis­i­tors! Face­book is the largest Casino and gam­blig place in the world, it’s the largest tourist attrac­tion in the world. Save on your ticket to Las Vegas and gam­ble on Face­book, con­vert your flight ticket to chips, pro­tect the envi­ron­ment and Play from Home. Face­book, the largest gam­bling joint, what a great image.

Dream: Have you ever seen Obama or Sarkozy pro­mot­ing their face in a Las Vegas or in a French Casino? No way! This would not be polit­i­cally cor­rect, or at least it was not up to now. But things have changes as promised by Obama: 6.5 mil­lion friends in the largest gam­bling joint world­wide that’s quite a per­for­mance and Face­book is aware of the “heal­ing” impact of peo­ple, such as Obama, Fed­erer, Sarkozy, rea­son why Face­book heav­ily pro­motes Celebrity pages.

Take it a step fur­ther and imag­ine that on poker cards you will find the faces of celebri­ties from Barack Obama to Hugo Chavez and from Paris Hilton to Gene Line. What, you don’t know Gene Line? It’s time you join Face­book to profit from the ulti­mate ben­e­fit Social Net­works provide:

You will be in good com­pany and you will meet at the gam­bling place any­one and any­thing: Hugo and Barack, Gene and Paris, Nico­las and Le Pen prov­ing that John Lennon and Mar­tin Luther King’s imag­i­na­tive dreams come true. One had a dream, the other imag­i­na­tion: who would have thought that friends and ene­mies would at last find peace­fully together and hold hands on one sin­gle table and who would have thought that the big rec­on­cil­i­a­tion or that the big boat all are in is a gam­bling table?

The Romans were right: to keep peo­ple happy, give them Bread and Games.

I see the Games but I can­not find the Bread, at least not on people’s plates.

When this morn­ing on French TV, in the most pop­u­lar Morn­ing Show one of the mod­er­a­tors sug­gested to take off from Face­book pic­tures and per­sonal info, it sure had a notice­able impact and I am sure that impact will be mea­sur­able. Worse, the pre­sen­ter, Laura Tenucci (Laura du Web) tried to close her Face­book account. Open­ing an account is a mat­ter of one minute. To closes it… she didn’t suc­ceed dur­ing the show.

What makes the issue worse: even if you close your account, your infor­ma­tion will not be erased. It’s going to remain there for ever wait­ing just for another secu­rity breach where all the logs of your closed account will become vis­i­ble and acces­si­ble, why not by the Google search Engine.

This is not a Dream, it’s a Nightmare.

• effects of face­book editorial
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• edi­to­r­ial and neg­a­tive effects of social media
• edi­to­r­ial about the dan­ger of facebook
• dan­gers of social net­work­ing editorial
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• neg­a­tives and Dan­gers of Face­book and their Impacts

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3. Social Media Mar­ket­ing by Ycademy
4. Socal Media Mar­ket­ing — Your Busi­ness on CNN
5. Noord­hoek

Tags: Barack Obama, Death of Facebook, Facebook, Facebook Danger, Facebook security, Gene Line, Laura du Web, Laura Tenucci, Nicolas Sarkozy, Paris Hilton, Twitter, Yorgo Nestoridis

This entry was posted on June 9, 2009 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Editorial, Facebook, Gene Line, Laura du Web, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Yorgo Nestoridis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.