from “My Life Is Your Asset?” (2012)

“For advertisers, yes — Facebook is a gold mine.  With Facebook providing a liberal platform for sharing personal information, advertisers no longer have to guess what you want.  They know what you want.  The ads appear on the side of your “Home” page announcing Bruce Springsteen tickets or car deals are most likely a product of you “Liking” Bruce Springsteen on your profile, or visiting BMW’s Facebook page.  These ads affirm that the advertising industry has elevated itself to a new standard where access to social-networking data is invaluable to the accuracy and success of marketing.  In a way, by the amount your Facebook information is filtered and processed, your Facebook profile serves as much a consumer profile as a social profile.

 Optimistically, I like to believe most of Facebook’s users are somewhat aware of the elasticity of their information; though in the heat of unrestricted interconnectivity, one can easily lose sight of how much of themselves they are sharing.  Thus, there is a certain dark magic in the open exchange of personal data that defines social networking: users share it, Facebook receives it, and advertisers sell it — all parties satisfied.