Blog 9

I randomly clicked on Brian Burke’s name as I was going through the list of names. I know him; he is in my group, so I ended up choosing him. As I scroll down his page I saw his #7 blog titled “Facebook.” Since I had written a blog on Facebook earlier I decided to read what he had to say about Facebook.

I am a regular user of Facebook and I get really frustrated when Facebook does all these changes on their websites. One thing I had not noticed myself, but I thought was interesting reading from Brian’s blog, was that they customize the ads on your Facebook page depending on your personality. When I wrote about the Facebook ads on one of my earlier blogs, I had mentioned that those ads do not appeal to me. I don’t even pay attention to them and neither do my friends. I knew Facebook is selling and letting others view our information but I had not paid attention to that they customize your page according to the information you provide on your Facebook page.

To see if the above was true, I did a little experiment. I noticed the ads playing on my Facebook page for 10-15 minutes and wrote down what I noticed. Some of the ads that were displayed on my page were about games, several ads on flight all around US, several ads on things related to fashion, apartment search, photography, style, organic foods, purses, makeup, acne treatment, salon ads, a lot of ads related to Hindi movies and music, fly worldwide, tea, and art related ads. When I compared to some of the things I have listed on my information page, not all, but many of these are related to things I have listed on my personal information page. I have listed things like I like art, tea, fashion, and I am a lot into Hindi movies and music. I don’t know why I got so many ads related to flying here and there. I did not put traveling as my interest on my personal information. But I have been talking about taking a trip to Pakistan in summer on my friends’ wall. So are the advertisers looking at the wall post and that too that carefully? That is creepy. I would not mind if another friend of mine who is listed as a friend on my Facebook comes up and tell me the things I am talking about with my friends on Facebook. Since I am talking about it publicly I would not find it creepy if any of my friends come and tell me. But when an unknown source does things like that, you feel as if you are being stalked!

I do agree with Brian when he mentions that Facebook should have notified its users what they are doing. They are always doing things on their own without telling its users. I am very conservative when it comes to other people having access to my information. Like Brian said it would not be a problem if Facebook had asked us or informed us about selling our information to these advertisers. I would rather be volunteering to give my information about my interest to others if I was asked, rather then just doing it through a sneaky way. It not just loses the trust but also makes me want to disown that thing. I have sent Facebook several negative emails about how I don’t like some of the changes they are doing, but like usually they never reply back. It was interesting to see that they have replied to me when I have had problem viewing any part of the Facebook page or having problem with any application, but when I sent them comments about what I don’t like about their changes, but they never reply back. Instead they just send an automated email saying some thing like “Thank you for writing to us. Due to heavy email we will be unable to answer individually. Please check our website for your answers.”

I sometimes feel that Facebook is making so much money out of us by doing nothing! There are a lot of users who would want to stay connected with their friends through Facebook. It is an amazing social network because I have all my friends from all the parts of the world on it. But by doing things in a sneaky way Facebook might lose its users. It will not be overnight but if people began to freak out they will not use Facebook. It will then become a page where user might join using all the fake information. I think Facebook should be really careful. They have reached far enough in making their website popular and profitable but they should not forget that all the users on Facebook have made it happen and they should pay attention to their privacy.