HOW FACEBOOK TRICKS COMPANIES TO WEAKEN THEIR DOMAIN BRANDS
December 13th, 2011 Posted in General Domain News | 20 Comments »Facebook! Everybody in the world is on Facebook, yes?
Nope. But it’s close. The biggest con happening now will affect domain sales to large companies, even if it’s only for a short time. This involves a simple Facebook advertising link that companies (or their ad agencies) are using, trying to “expand” their client’s reach, without realizing that Facebook is MARKETING THE FACEBOOK BRAND FIRST. I’ll explain this later on in this article.
First, a little history of Facebook. Launched in February, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has presented its seemingly innocent but clearly addictive website to the world, and millions have responded, thinking that having a system of sharing everything in their lives, including photos, messages, likes, dislikes, marital status, education, entertainment and basically anything a user could reveal about themselves to their friends and family and private people (if that’s their choice), would be safe. All this information about themselves would be kept private and open only to those people they wanted. *Zuckerberg snicker*
Facebook is now the premiere place for socializing, and it’s a magnet for sucking personal information out of you much more than you would want people outside your “inner circle” to know. Most of us would like our private information available ONLY to those we consider trusted and close to us. (Even that’s questionable. Just watch a few episodes of “Judge Judy” to watch people be bashed in the face by the crass and destructive nature of their lovers, coworkers, friends and family who think destroying a relationship with you is worth $1,500 and a chance to permanently embarrass their names and faces on national TV. Just think of the syndication rotation of these episodes, which I’ve seen sold on DVD, and replayed as “repeats” dating back to 2006. Facebook will hold all your info, photos, comments etc forever, even after you “close” your acct with them.)
How did this Pandora’s Box come about? Unfortunately, Facebook was “FREE”. No cost. Why is this unfortunate? Because Faceb00k used the well-known trick of drug dealers by giving new customers their addictive wares for free or very cheap to get you “hooked”. So Zuckmeister built up a huge following for his “free” socializing service – using tactics at the beginning most of us would call “unethical”. Now, the lure of “free” friend and family searching (sending the clunky “Classmates.com” to “Social-Outcast-land”) will come back to haunt those who’ve drank the Facebook Kool Aid. The idea of having your desire to be “accepted” back in high school struck a chord with even those who still want that past glory into their “Senior” years.
Yet, nobody seemed to ask: How would Facebook and Zuck the Schmuck recover their costs and make money off the now close to 1 BILLION people registered with them?
Then comes the BIG BOMBSHELL – which exploded fairly quietly, spreading pieces of your private information shrapnel out into the unregulated corporate world. International companies, including magazines, auto manufacturers, clothing companies, discount warehouses and thousands more companies who suddenly became a part of your life without you even knowing it. They’ve got your photos. They’ve got your last few vacation info, including names of your guests, hosts, family members you’ve visited. They have your loves and likes.
Yes, you may not know it because they don’t broadcast it back to you, but every link of a FB advertiser you clicked opened up your “private” Facebook account to that company. That company that advertised their Facebook link to you, and you clicked, have downloaded all your pics, comments, and personal information into their own database. Faceb0ok hasn’t really “sold” this info to them. Facebook sold their advertisers on how to “trick” FB users to innocently click on the advertising link connected to the company’s Facebook page. Bingo! All your “private” info with FB is now available to that always-present and problematic “third party”.
I read about an amazing topic called “Marketing Myopia” on BusinessDictionary.com a few weeks back. The concept of marketing myopia was discussed in an article (titled “Marketing Myopia,” in July-August 1960 issue of the Harvard Business Review) by Harvard Business School emeritus professor of marketing, Theodore C. Levitt (1925-2006), who suggests that companies get trapped in this situation because they omit to ask the vital question, “What business are we in?“


