There is no doubt in my mind that social networks and social media are the future of the 21st century.
It has amazing potential yet at the same time, as you would see with implementation of any breakthrough innovation, it goes through considerable growing pains.
One of the pain points that makes cringe even social network aficionados, is the constant tampering with privacy policy and terms of use. Of course social networks don’t call it tampering, they just call it “changing” – hey it’s their companies so they do what they want.
But the truth is many users feel betrayed since the final product they observe now, and the way the companies treat their private data is a far cry from what people agreed to when they sign up to get an account a few years ago.
Case in point – the way Facebook is morphing from closed community into a world-wide open social network, and the way it’s constantly changing its policies in a direction that is far less friendly for their user base and are much more accommodating for their advertisers and business partners.
I’m not pleased with this transformation either. But we need to remember that social networks are not non-profits (at least the majority of them). So theoretically they were created to make money for their owners and investors.
Yet many social networks in their current form are a huge money drain. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that they are trying to find effective ways to monetize their user base.
After all, nobody is twisting your hand into providing all this demographic data on your profile. It’s your choice. And if you do provide this information, it’s a little naive to think that nobody will use it, and the only purpose this information would serve is to help your social friends to find out more about you so that you could share your thoughts about your common interests.
As we see in real life, company can change their privacy policy at any time, so when you do provide any information, you should be comfortable with a thought that the whole world will see it, and not only your friends. If you don’t like this idea, then just fill in the basic fields. And nobody says that you should share your main email address either.
If you don’t like spam, then it’s your move to make sure you’re not getting any.
On another hand, social networks are a wonderful venue to promote your business at low cost or without any costs whatsoever. If done right, you can grow your list of social friends into many thousands.
And if you share common interests, and provide value in your communications, many of them can become your customers.
Social networks do not charge you one red cent for using their services and resources. But since they have to make profits somehow, they found a non-monetary currency that you’re paying them with. (Though sometimes you might not even understand that you are actually paying, and that it’s not a “free service” per se).
- Image via Wikipedia
So what currency do they use to charge you and still let you feel like you’re having a free lunch? It’s a tiny-tiny thing called “data”. In a sense, you’re trading off your private information for whatever services you get in exchange.
In 20-30 years information might very well become a new currency accepted all over the world. And people will be paying for products and services in bytes and kilobytes, just as there are paying in dollars and cents now.
It’s just a basic rule of economics – if you’re getting valuable service you have to pay for it, and there is nothing to be upset about.
So the way I see it we have 2 choices here. You can either whine about all the negative aspects of social networks or look at the positive side and utilize social media potential at its fullest and build your business.
If you don’t like how certain social network treats your data then just stop using it (although it might be a little too late now since your data already was distributed through multiple channels and stored in the third party databases.)
The more productive approach would be to employ a viral effect of social sites.
Want to know how to use social networks to grow your business? Then just click this link…
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More information on this topic:
Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook
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- Some Very Interesting Personal Branding Statistics (socialmediatoday.com)
- From Social Media to Social Business: The Missing ‘Social’ Link (e1evation.com)
- Social Networks: The Unseen Dangers (cloudave.com)
- College Admissions & The Social Media Revolution (socialtimes.com)
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