Recently there was a hue and cry over Facebook conducting a social experiment on people to determine their responses to a particular stimuli.Read the whole story here.

In this day and age,privacy is almost extinct.There are many services today that you can login into with just your email without creating a separate user account.Your email address most probably has the most accurate information in it (all those security questions that you supposedly had to take to ‘secure’ your email account help to get tidbits of information about your personality ).Your mobile number is also updated accurately with your email account.Yeah,Yahoo’s ads in your inbox have been tailored for you 🙂

Facebook has over 100 million Indian users as of now but only a tiny fraction of them contributed to Facebook’s revenue in 2013.Facebook is pulling out all stops to ensure that they have a better understanding of its users.The recent acquisition of WhatsApp is a brilliant move towards realizing its motive of increasing revenue.I know that you have read reports that Facebook would not change WhatsApp and that everything would remain as it was.

Consider this,if someone had information about the time you spent chatting,the type of conversations you had,videos and pictures your shared–wouldn’t it help them to find a better way to market to you?

When Microsoft bought Skype in 2011,many industry experts were left wondering at the relevance of the acquisition.Well..if I knew the number of users who used Skype and the people they connected with —wouldn’t this be sufficient material for understanding my audience and fine-tune my next marketing campaign?

There are even reports that SMS is going to be phased out with people using messenger services like WhatsApp,Viber more frequently.The reason behind this is simple—SMS is free and does not require Internet connectivity,WhatsApp and other messenger/chat services require internet connectivity which you need to pay for.

With the rise in significance of mobile marketing,it makes more sense get MORE people hooked to the Internet on mobile. 

 

Image Source:www.comscore.com

So,there is no need to feel violated about Facebook or any company out there trying to manipulate your ‘feelings’ since the moment you ‘socialize’ your privacy is shattered(Makes you wish you were like Christopher Nolan who does not carry his phone with him or check his email!!).

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on your outlook.It might be just one more thing you must be aware of.I personally  don’t let it affect me as I don’t have anything to hide (apart from my bank account information which is also probably scrutinized ).

Image Credit: http://www.jaymantri.com