Homo Viator

I am not sure if the facebook users among you want to hear this, but the company has launched the most privacy invading advertising model ever.

Yesterday it began selling "ads that display people’s profile photos next to commercial messages that are shown to their friends about items they purchased or registered an opinion about." From an advertiser's point of view this is not short of an industry revolution. Nothing is more convincing than having a friend of yours recommend a product to you. In the case of facebook it is 50 million friends. 200.000 friends are added everyday.

Many users will dislike this kind of privacy invasion, but I could not care less. I am a modern day consumer. I want to get the product that best meets my taste and expectations and I want to use as little time as possible to find that product. I basically want to maximize product satisfaction in the most efficient way possible. This is why I dig i-Tunes and Amazon recommendations and warmly welcome Facebook's new advertising model. Read this New York Times article if you want to find out more about that model.