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Facebook aims to market its user data bank to businesses
Richard Wray
London
Guardian
Monday, Feb 2, 2009
Facebook intends to capitalise on the wealth of information
it has about its users by offering its 150 million-strong customer
base to corporations as a market research tool. The appearance,
later this year, of corporate polls targeted at certain parts
of the Facebook audience because of the information they have
posted on their pages, is likely to infuriate privacy campaigners.
Last week Mark Zuckerberg, the company's 24-year-old founder
and chief executive, showed the audience at the World Economic
Forum in Davos how the social networking site could be used
to poll specific groups of users.
He asked users in Palestine and then Israel about peace issues
before relaying the results back to the audience within minutes.
He also polled more than 100,000 American users of the website,
asking them whether they thought President Obama's fiscal stimulus
package would be enough to resurrect the economy. Two out of
five said it was not enough.
(Article continues below)
Giving consumer brands the chance to use such a wide audience
to get a quick response to targeted questions would do away
with, or at least reduce their reliance on, expensive and time-consuming
focus groups.
Speaking to well known tech blogger Robert Scoble at the event,
Zuckerberg said 2009 will be Facebook's "intense"
year as it tries to justify some of the mammoth valuations that
have been placed upon it by making some serious revenues through
advertising. He was even seen sporting a tie, a sartorial extra
which the Harvard drop-out has so far eschewed.
Full
article here
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