Simon Garfield of the Guardian has this week interviewed Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg and the result is a very interesting and detailed article on Guardian online. One of the most curious things to emerge from it is Zuckerberg’s frequent emphasis on ’sharing’, which he sees as Facebook’s most primary function. But Garfield is astute to highlight the importance of asking ourselves; just what exactly are we sharing, why, and for whose benefit?

The issue is not a new one in relation to FB; we all remember the disasterous and intrusive compulsory Beacon app, which monitored user spending habits and harvested the info for corporate clients. Understandably the user backlash was so swift and severe that FB quickly pulled the app - but some of the principles behind it are evident still in other practices. I decide to log in to my Facebook account to assess the effects of the current level of advertising and commercialisation on my user experience…

The first thing that should be noted is that there is not an overwhelming quantity of advertising involved with using FB. When I look at my profile I have a couple of fairly small and unintrusive ads in the right hand margin, which are directly connected to the info I have entered into my profile. In terms of ad presence and prominence therefore, things feel ok - in short it is perfectly possible to use FB and largely ignore them, making the trade-off to use the free service seem quite worthwhile.

However the issue is that in order for the advertising to be as minimal as it is, the ads need to be highly specific and targeted, as FB can raise far more revenue per pixel by using such ads as opposed to non-targeted ones. The challenge in terms of user privacy thereby clearly involves a delicate balance between maintaining revenue on the one hand, and user trust on the other.

For me personally the specificity of the targeteing is a major factor in my feeling towards it. For example, I recently added a Sopranos themed app to my profile, after which I noticed a jump in the number of adverts I was seeing that were connected to buying a new television, digibox, or tv-channel package. Fair enough I thought, if this was to mean I could use the service for free then I felt quite happy to continue to do so.

Things changed however when I noticed I was getting ads directly connected to TV shows or bands that I had listed in my ‘likes’. Suddenly I was being exposed to a much more specific level of advertising - Sopranos coffee mugs, Arrested Development t-shirts (I had listed the show as one of my favourites) and other similar items.

Once this started happening I pretty much overnight became quite wary of listing too many details that I expected would be thus used (I only have one or two shows or bands listed now) since there was something in the overly direct correlation between my profile info and the advertising that was somehow creepy and offputting.

I didn’t want to enter personal info about myself once I felt I was basically providing a free and in a way unconsenting consumer survey. Though I had had targeted advertising on my profile for a while, it had up until this point felt general enough for me to regard it as uninstusive. Now I felt as though every detail of my profile was sooner or later to be turned into ad revenue - and that this was the whole point of the FB exercise.

Ultimately, as Zuckerberg emphasises, sharing is good. But it will only continue if we trust FB not to cross the line of commercialising this sharing entirely and blurring the guiding principles of the venture. If the advertising is just a way to maintain the service and keep it free then it must be retained - but if it starts to affect the levels to which people feel comfortable to share, then it must be re-assessed.

Perhaps one solution is to remove the most specific, and hence obvious, level of advertising (the ‘Heroes’ bed linen for the ‘Heroes’ fan for example) - and retain the others, though of course there would be revenue implications in this. Regardless of this FB and Zuckerberg must know that once the line between community and commerce is totally blurred, many users (myself included) will simply migrate to another network. I don’t doubt that a healthy balance is possible - but it can only be maintained by continuously listening to the feedback of the community.

Dejan Levi
www.etondigital.com