Because Obie Joe Media emphasizes online promotion of books and authors, we get this Q frequently:
"So, you think I should be on Facebook?"
While we think many social networks are innocuous at worst, and interesting at best, we haven't declared a preference for one form over another.
Except for Facebook. Here's why.
One of the beauties of independent bookstores is their familiarity with their customers, and to respect that familiarity by making recommendations for new books we're sure our customer might love. Not every recommendation is a hit, though, and when our customer declines, no hard feelings. We all move on.
Facebook has taken that type of familiarity and perverted it for profit that serves only someone else, and never you. Look, being the aged wonder that Ms. Obie Joe, she appreciates that her sense of privacy may not suit the modern version. Information is free in a sense that's never been seen before. When Facebook premiered its News Feed feature -- which broadcasts users' activity on their friends' home page -- there was a huge outcry over the perceived affront to privacy. Now? News Feed is one of the most popular features of Facebook.
When the bookstore employee "harvests" your preferences to recommend the next book, it's a limited use. Once you decline that recommendation, the bookstore ceases use of the information The bookstore does not share it with another bookstore, or a sneaker shop, or even your credit card company.
Facebook, on the other hand, mines every single aspect of you, save your actual DNA. "Most Facebook users have no idea their personal information is being commercially harvested and sent out to the thousands of third-party developers whose applications populate the site," notes Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy in an interview with GQ.
And even better? Your digital identity -- all of it -- will be further snagged by Facebook's newest collaboration with "connect." You log into your account on Facebook, and then, everywhere you go -- everywhere -- is captured by Facebook for their use and profit.
People trust Facebook because of that one little feature: the ability to say who is a friend, and who is not your friend. And Facebook’s defense for shirring away their users’ privacy is that these new systems afford greater connection between us (heh. depends who the “us” is). But what we should really pay attention to is the biggest friend-enemy of all: Facebook.
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