Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category
Facebook Ads
January 4th, 2009
Facebook ads are quite small and neatly located in sidebars, and they ought to be easy to ignore. But many Facebook members find them quite annoying, because they seem to be personal and hypercritical. Facebook knows an awful lot of about members, and can use that information to target ads based on age, location, relationship status, sexual orientation, religion, political views, educational level, profession and personal interests among other things.
I don’t have much personal information in my profile, so I’m targeted mainly as a woman of a certain age. And what we’re mainly interested in, apparently, is getting rid of our wrinkles, using all sorts of different products and services. (Or perhaps there are just lots of different ads for the same product or service — I’m careful not to click on these which I know would only encourage Facebook to show me more of them!)
Even though I understand why I am getting these ads, which I consider to be completely irrelevant by the way, I find do find it quite depressing. Imagine having a jerky neighbor who calls out “Hello, Pruneface!” every he sees you — that’s how I feel about these Facebook ads.
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