The easy access to internet has posed a new challenge to the privacy of internet users, who feel their privacy is not protected. Facebook, a free social networking platform is designed to share user information, which is also combined with advertisers to showcase their products depending on the user’s browsing pattern. The term Privacy aptly suits the Facebook business model, as the organization has huge capability to gather, store and analyze user information. The main objective of Facebook is to gather user data as much as possible, so that relevant advertisements can be served to the users.
Facebook has its own principles that administer the relationship with users and others who work together with Facebook. Using the user data Facebook has also helped many families to be in touch with each other, and has also helped in finding missing people. To be openly connected and attain the status of global leader in social media, and make more money, Facebook has unevenly violated a user’s privacy in the past, and has raised doubts about whether it should be responsible for the personal data of hundreds of millions of people. . Facebook also gains from handling and evading the privacy concerns raised by its users and government officials.
Facebook is growing well through advertisements by connecting with other companies; therefore the privacy of users is very important for their business model. Companies work to make profit, and breaking through the privacy of user’s personal data is a method to benefit the most in this business model, which results in underestimating the importance of consumer privacy. Consumer retention also plays an important role in the business model, and Facebook constantly keeps informing its user’s that the personal data is safe and secure in order not to lose the consumers, and they can continue to use the services. Going ahead, it will be interesting to understand how Facebook will stabilize their growing income from the advertisement model (based on private data of users) and the concern of privacy for users.
Works Cited
"Facebook Privacy: There Is No Privacy." Laudon, Kenneth and Jane Laudon. Management Information Systems: Organization and Technology in the Networked Enterprise. Prentice Hall, n.d. 192-195. PDF.
