Case Study 5: Facebook: It's About the Money
Facebook is an online social networking service
headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Its name comes from a colloquialism
for the directory given to students at some American universities. Facebook was
founded on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg (https://www.facebook.com/zuck)
 |
| Mark Zuckerberg |
with his college roommates and
fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin
Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The founders had initially limited the website's
membership to Harvard students, but later expanded it to colleges in the Boston
area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for
students at various other universities and later to their high-school students.
Facebook now allows anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old worldwide to
become a registered user of the website, although proof is not required.
Question 1
Perform an ethical analysis of Facebook, what is the ethical
dilemma presented by this case?
Facebook is the leading Social Networking Site of the World.
Facebook mission is to make the world more open and connected. Facebook helps
Internet users stay connected with their friends, families, and colleagues. It
helps them discover and learn more about what is going on in the world around
them. It helps them express themselves by sharing their opinions, ideas, photos,
and activities. However, what the company actually does is to share tons of
information about users with large multinational advertisers to bring the
benefit for it. Advertisers can engage with users based upon the information
shared by users such as age, gender, location, education, work history or
specific interests. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg often says that people want to
be more open and connected. It's unclear whether that is truly the case,
but it is certainly true that Facebook wants the world to be more open and
connected because it stands to make more money in that world.
Question 2
What is the relationship of privacy to Facebook’s business
model?
Talking privacy to Facebook is a bit ironic. Facebook’s
entire business model is based on aggregation and sharing user information.
They give people a free social media platform to use and in turn sell
advertising and insights based on what they learn about user. Facebook has
massive capabilities to collect, store and analyze data. This allows Facebook
to sell very targeted advertising. Therefore, privacy is the Facebook business
model.
Question 3
Describe the weaknesses of Facebook’s privacy policies and
features. What management, organization, and technology factors have
contributed to those weaknesses?
The weakness behind Facebook's privacy issues was a lack of
communication between Facebook and its users. The facebook.com has try to
protect their users privacy information a lot, but there still have some
weaknesses which didn’t solve. People are worry about the handling and usage
which the facebook doing with “the extensive information it collects from its
users. But the situation is, the facebook should try they best to use their
users privacy information to increase the revenues, but they can’t violate the
privacy of their users. So in my opinion, the facebook are make profit from
their user’s information, but lots of users think their information are privacy
and they don’t believe the facebook’s privacy policies. So the facebook should
pay lots of money to “truly capitalize on the massive audience and immersive
environment of the site. That’s all the weaknesses of Facebook’s privacy
policies. The company’s Beacon advertising service was the management to help
the facebook to develop their privacy policies, this service can help the users
to protect their account and protect their information also. But this
assumption was often making mistakes, so many people are protest the Beacon. A
organization which called the civic action group MoveOn.org created a facebook
group to against the Beacon. So finally the Facebook.com change this service
and gave their users the ability to disable it completely.
The New Feed feature is another example of the facebook.com use their users
information incorrectly. People think it’s “overly invasive so another
organization “Students against Facebook News Feed” start to against this
feature.
Now, Facebook has joined Myspace and other social network in offering a simpler
process to permanently delete your account and the personal information it
contains. Facebook has developed many applications or features like the
Facebook Platform to solve these weaknesses; they are widely use on the
programs in Facebook in order to protect users profits.
Question 4
Will Facebook be able to have a successful business model
without invading privacy? Explain your answer. Are they any measure Facebook
could take to make this possible?
Facebook as a social networking website provides people with
many kinds of advantages to communicate with others. Facebook target market
based on their demographic information, hobbies, regions, and specified
criteria in a comfortable and engaging environment. People can find their
friends, see the updates of friends’ profiles, communicated with each other,
and use different applications on it. Business model intends to generate
revenue and profits. As more and more people register the site, the brand image
is increasing. Based on the network effect, users do businesses on the site.
Facebook was widespread fast among high schools, colleges and universities that
provide an easy way to find friends. This made students want to join in it also
because of narrow potential network with details in school activities.
Facebook’s value and growth potential is determined by how effectively it can
leverage the personal data is aggregated about its users to attract
advertisers. Advertising is the mainly revenue of Facebook. Therefore, in my
opinion, I don’t think Facebook will be able to have a successful model without
invading privacy.
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