NOTE: If you're reading this post on Facebook, it is copied automatically from my blog at Down The Digital Trail some things I'd censor more on Facebook may be said less diplomatically because my blog is where I vent.
Everyone today has been bitching about the changes to Facebook and comparing it to Microsoft. Don't get me wrong, I despise Microsoft's business practices, and most everything they do, but this isn't a fair comparison when you look at their business and customer base.
The end user is MS's customer. They have to keep the end user in mind at all times when they make changes to their products. If a user doesn't like a change and decides to stop buying Microsoft products, or computers with MS products on them, MS stops getting money.
Alternately end users are a commodity for Facebook (and Google). Their business is to collect data their users enter through various channels and sell it to other companies either for market research, direct advertising, or for other reasons. If any and all changes FB makes are getting you to put in more data, and more valuable data for their customers. If making a change causes them to sacrifice a small number of users, but allows them to get more valuable data, it's a net win for them. (Yes I am aware there is a point where they could have too small a number of users to be valuable to their customers, but we're no where NEAR that threshold.)
This post isn't to tell people to stop complaining, or just roll over and "enjoy it" if you don't like the changes, by all means speak with your digital feet and go somewhere else. However, you have to know what the business of the service you're using is, and weigh the benefits you get out of the service against the sale of your data and the way they collect it.
Instead of comparing FB to MS, a better company to compare them to would be a TV station. They sell ads, and they gather data in the form of ratings to say what your watching, and what you buy. If a show isn't generating ads, or getting the viewers the advertisers on that show want, the station must, and will change the show.
And, too, MS isn't powered by advertising. Unless, of course, MS makes too many more slips and Clippy becomes an advertising venue. "I see you're writing an article about caffeine: Would you like to save $1 on a mocha venti at Starbucks?"
ReplyDeletejust had a friend post this cartoon on FB and thought it fit well going to add it up top too http://i.imgur.com/WiOMq.jpg
ReplyDeleteEdward Abbey: "... and we can finally relax, at last, into that peace which passeth understanding, content as pigs on a warm manure pile. Until the man comes with the knife, to carry the analogy to its conclusion, until pig-sticking time rolls around again and the fires are lit under the scalding tubs." :-D
ReplyDeleteAndrew Lewis: "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."
@_shirecat