Weekly Analysis #4

  Mona J. Barnes                Weekly Analysis #4   due May 3

            Facebook has a very specific formula that they use and have been using for the past few years.  They have this formula down to a science and make millions of dollars a day due to this formula; which is based on advertising and tracking what you as a user click on, look at, like, or read.

            Advertisers buy space from a popular site to advertise their products or services and of course the more viewers or users Facebook has, the more they can charge for these companies to have their product or service advertised.

            Facebook has a computer generated program that tracks everything that every single user looks at as listed above.  They actually have their site set up in such a way that certain advertisers ads will be seen every so many minutes at certain time intervals. 

            When you click on a page that you want to follow, it will send other things similar to that page to you.  I happen to like Rick Gervais and Karl Pilkington from podcasts; TV shows they have done together, as well as their old radio show in London.  Once I click on Karl Pilkington’s page to follow him, I will get sent many other things of this type (humor, television, podcasts of other comedians). I thought that Facebook was tailor making my page for me.  They are doing that but as a means to make money by having me click on more of their advertisers information, not because they were nice and thought I would be interested. 

            They also use this formula for Facebook users worldwide to see what is attracting the main attention whether it is a product page or a subject matter that is trending.  They will make sure to include those items or stories as one of the top 10 items in their News Feed.  Once they get you interested, you usually have to watch a small video to get to the story you are looking for.  This is where Facebook makes money from us and from the advertisers, a sort of quid pro quo.  They have made millions as advertisers for mobile phones. Most companies, if you read their privacy policies, will tell you that even when you click on the “do not share my information” button, it is really not done, someone finds a way around it to get to you via advertising. 

            This formula, once they figured out the algorithm for the computer to do the tracking, it determines what we see and in what order we see it. This formula has made Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, billions of dollars.