When Facebook announced its IPO early last year at a $100 billion valuation, each of its users was cited as being worth at or slightly over $100. In the year since, Facebook has continued to gain users and the number of applications requiring the use of a Facebook profile to work are increasing.
Put simply: everyone wants your data.
Spotify is a great example of an application that requires registration using your Facebook profile. It knows where you live, where you were born, your age and every other piece of demographic data you have online. This data is a part of its monetization strategy: the data you give it access to by logging in allows it to target its advertising.
Worse still, many users don’t care about how much of their data companies have access to. They are often offering free services, how bad could it be?
Whereas services like Spotify grant users a valuable resource with reasonable features for the data provided to them, there are a great number of apps that do not. The popularity of games on Facebook is one such case where a third-party is granted access to consumer data for a feature-limited throw-away game. Worse still is the fact that these games then have the audacity to charge exuberant prices or force players through long “grinds” in order to make any progress. Frustration will set in, and players will then spend money in order to establish progress. It is no wonder then that popular Facebook game developer Zynga amassed $445 million, or 12 percent of Facebook’s revenue, in 2011.
Many individuals claim the only way forward is to remove your online presence from these websites. Think of it as a throwback to the Internet of the 1990s, disconnected from all modern forms of media. In our ever-distracted society, such a change is almost unheard of and most would not consider it feasible.
The solution is much simpler. Giving your data away to every company that asks for it is foolish. Instead, individuals should strive to be more capitalistic in their investments.
Before signing up for a service, you should ask yourself just how free it is. Consider its importance and figure out if the service it offers is worth the information you are providing. After all, you aren’t really getting a free service. You are selling your data for convenience and utility.
