rashbre central: whatsup? just a few more messages from randomised sponsors

Friday 26 August 2016

whatsup? just a few more messages from randomised sponsors


My Facebook deliberations continue. Every day, it handles something like 10 billion messages, 4.5 billion hits on the ‘like’ button and 350 million new picture uploads.

I see they are now about to blend their sub-company WhatsApp's data with Facebook, so that they have ready access to phone numbers which can be used in marketing and *ahem* 'offer' messages from corporations.

Yep, it's all about the money.

I can't help thinking that the Facebook client looks like a badly engineered legacy environment. Things you'd want to do to arrange information as an end-user just aren't available or obvious. Most of the control is behind the scenes.

Some of that design will be deliberate, like obscuring the buttons to opt out of certain things, but the rest looks messy. I'm sure the millennial view is that it doesn't matter and a blast of Hadoop or Spark can make it all make sense.

Just splatter a few number crunchers over the top and sell the results to marketeers.

I'm not sure. Even with the post rationalist architectural drawings, I sense snake oil lubricants in the machine.

2 comments:

Pat said...

There is definitely a feeling your likes and dislikes are being monitored.

rashbre said...

Pat I still get the most random items suggested through the various advertising and marketing schemes. Maybe time for another list!