I was intrigued by an e-mail invitation from an old friend to join her as one of her “friends” on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/), the on-line social networking website.
At the very least, it was an opportunity to catch up with an old friend so I readily registered and joined the network. After all, I already enthusiastically support FastPitch (http://www.fastpitchnetworking.com/) which is a business networking site, one of the fastest growing business networking communities in the world. Their online network provides me with a one-stop shop to network and market my marketing & PR business, make business connections, post & distribute press releases, market my company (and myself), promote my blog and more.
FastPitch necessarily contains much personal and business information so that other entrepreneurs have sufficient information to decide if they want to do business with me. So I had little reservation about recording lots of details about myself in Facebook.
However, the word on the street is that Facebook is preparing to introduce a new advertising plan that will let marketeers like me customise advertising for its more than 37 million customers. When you consider the amount of personal information we Facebook members have put into their pages, the potential for advertisers is unparalleled.
Here is the dilemma. I am happy for my business, and some personal, information to be recorded and being made widely available on FastPitch and welcome being contacted by business prospects across the globe. As an individual, I am happy for personal details to be available to my friends across the Facebook network; after all, since joining my initial friend on Facebook I have enjoyed being contacted by many old friends and renewed many former acquaintances.
However, with the Internet becoming a key component of our daily social experience, and people sharing more and more of their personal information, protecting one’s privacy has become that much more of a challenge.
The reality is that those using sites like Facebook and MySpace (rumoured to be following in Facebook’s footsteps) can now be very easily targeted by marketeers like me with very specific offerings. Heck, they even know that I have a 3 year old dog that I brought home from a rescue centre; just think of the marketing opportunities that creates. But I didn’t join Facebook to be a commercial target.
I will be watching this new development very carefully over the coming months. I will be disappointed if I have to pull the plug on my Facebook but, as someone who already suffers from huge volumes of spam mail every day, I do not want to be a further marketing target!
