Facebook will be rolling out a new feature for companies to market their products and services using Facebook. Facebook has teamed up with four data brokerage companies in an effort to provide more personal information on users to companies for marketing purposes. The data brokers are Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom and Bluekai. Information about you will include online browsing habits via the use of cookies as well as other offline data via the use of loyalty and credit cards. This information will be linked to your Facebook account using various methods including your email, phone number (did you give your number to Facebook “in case you forgot your password”?) and credit cards (did you purchase a Facebook gift recently?).
This practice can seem a bit like 1984 but is it really that bad? Facebook is going to push ads on you even if you opt-out of this new method so wouldn’t you rather see ads you might actually be interested in? Or is this just too much of your personal information flying around the internet? How do you feel about Big Brother Facebook watching you?
