Why Social Media Systems Cannot Stop Their Data Collection Processes Unless They Are Forced To Do So
A person should always strive to have total privacy on the internet. This may be impossible but it is the right mind set for a person to keep their profile as private as possible. The more information that a social network has about a person, the more targeted the ads become and the more likely that the social networking system will be able to convince the user to buy something. This is not necessarily bad, but it could be bad if the person has no self control over the situation. There are those people who are compulsive about spending and this could be a very dangerous situation for them to be involved with in the future.
If a social networking system can get more information about a person then they will use that information to target ads that have a good chance of converting. In this case, conversion means that the person will buy the product presented to them. This is what the business owner is buying from the social networking system, the ability to sell something to use the user. The more successful they are at converting those people on the social networks to buyers, the more ads they will buy and the longer they stay clients of that social networking system. Therefore, the social networking systems will always attempt to get more information about a user of their system because that allows them to make more money over a longer period of time with their advertiser.
Therefore, a person on the social media system does not realize it; however, the social media platform will always attempt to get more information about a user because it benefits the system in the long run. Therefore, the aim of a social media business is not more privacy for their users, but less privacy. The more information they have about a person and what they like, dislike, and do every day gives the social media system a better understanding of what kinds of offers would work to get that user to buy. Most of the social media networks are not consumer friendly in this case, they are actually business friendly.
The social networking systems have to be this way because they have no other way to monetize their systems. Two truths about the social networking systems are that they were not initially developed to be monetized in any way shape or form. Most of these sites were developed to be free systems that people could talk to each other on, however, this model does not pay the bills when the user base becomes too big. The bandwidth issues and the size of the profile information would become too unwieldy for any website to handle on its own without some form of money being generated from all that use.
The other truth about the social networking systems is that they cannot abandon their current form of monetization. This means that the only way they can be monetized is through advertising because the precedent has already been set that the network is free. Therefore, they would lose a lot of their users and power in the businesses eye's if they changed monetization methods. A social media system cannot change directions or they will lose their business completely, that is just how things work.
Scott Buendia consults for Bizbuilt.com. All the views and tactics in this article are tactics and ideas of the author; they do not necessarily represent the ideals, beliefs, or trademarks of Bizbuilt.com. Visit his card on Bizbuilt here.
