Facebook’s plan for world domination…
or at least Google domination, spelled out in this excellent Wired article. Apparently CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s central theory is that people will want an interconnected “friend”-based approach to finding information online as opposed to the mountain of dry impersonal data delivered by Google.
But while, the anti-Google swagger will get the most notice in this article, I was really struck by what it said on page 3 about Facebook’s plan to mobilize all the resources given to it by users:
The drumbeat of controversy surrounding Facebook illustrates the catch-22 the social network faces: It has a massive storehouse of user data, but every time it tries to capitalize on that information, its members freak out. This isn’t an academic problem; the company’s future depends on its ability to master the art of behavioral targeting—selling customized advertising based on user profiles.
