So much for any idea that all techies are singing from the same songbook. Mark Z. is seeing pushback from high places.
FB went too far with the data collection.
He makes an interesting point.
With Apple, the tech darling of the last decade, they sold a product that customers believed was effective, functional, fashionable, reliable, and (perhaps most importantly) that unquantifiable term loosely called ‘sexy’.
Case in point: this story is being typed on a product Apple made — because it does all the things I need it to do.
Their product is, well, their product. Not so with Facebook, and that is Wozniak’s objection.
“Users provide every detail of their life to Facebook and … Facebook makes a lot of advertising money off this,” he said in an email to USA TODAY. “The profits are all based on the user’s info, but the users get none of the profits back.”
Wozniak said he’d rather pay for Facebook than have his personal information exploited for advertising. And he heaped praise on Apple for respecting people’s privacy.
“Apple makes its money off of good products, not off of you,” Wozniak said. “As they say, with Facebook, you are the product.”
Source: USA Today[emphasis added]
So, how has Wozniak responded to the latest revelations of Facebook’s use of private data?
From that same article:
Wozniak is one of the prominent users who have called it quits. On Sunday, he deactivated his Facebook account after posting the following message: “I am in the process of leaving Facebook. It’s brought me more negatives than positives. Apple has more secure ways to share things about yourself. I can still deal with old school email and text messages.”
Is he the exception or the trend? It’s a little early to tell.
But combining that with the growing perception that Facebook is ‘for old people’, could be a problem for a network who’s real product is the user.
The firm predicts that the number of Facebook users between the ages of 12 and 17 will decrease by 5.6 percent in 2018. For the first time in Facebook history, this year, less than half of all US internet users that fall in that age category are predicted to use Facebook at least once a month.
It’s not just teens that are losing interest in Facebook: the website is predicted to lose 2 million users who are 24 or younger in 2018, while Snapchat is expected to gain 1.9 million users from the same age group.
Source: Sputnik News
The social media giant is at a crossroads. Will it lock up it’s position as a ‘great’ company alongside Apple? Or will it go to the same dot-com dustbin as ‘Napster’ or MySpace?
Time will tell.
Maybe alienating half of their clientele over political disagreements isn’t the best long-term strategy after all.
Will they reconsider? Or are they already ‘all in’ on that front?
And what do YOU think of Wozniak’s plan? Let us know in the comments!
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