That Bridge Was Burnt

Facebook recently announced two separate expansions to its ad network:

1)      One is called Atlas, by which advertisers can use Facebook’s extensive knowledge of individuals to place better ads on other websites.

2)     The other scheme is called Audience Network and is only meant for mobile devices. If an advertiser buys an ad on Facebook, then Facebook will display those ads not only the Facebook app itself but also inside other apps on your phone.

Ellis Hamburger describes it nicely: brace yourselves for a world where “the ads you see inside your apps might get creepier or “more relevant””.

Now before you bring out your torches and pitchforks and burn Facebook at the stake, consider why exactly you are so horrified. Since Facebook is free to its users, surely they need to make money in some way, right? How many would join a paid social network that promised that it wouldn’t track and sell data about you?

That alternative need not be a thought experiment anymore. Ello, a recently launched social network, promises just that:

“Ello’s entire structure is based around a no-ad and no data-mining policy.”

That, of course, raises the question as to how Ello plans to make money. Their answer:

“Very soon we will begin offering special features to our users. If we create a special feature that you like, you can choose to pay a very small amount of money to add it to your Ello account forever.”

Ben Thompson argues that this approach is a death warrant. If the basic features that everyone gets for free are terrible, nobody will join. And if the basic set is good enough, then who’ll buy the premium features? Further, if there are issues with the basic set, what incentive does Ello have to fix them?

Besides, Facebook attracts far more criticism on the privacy invasion front than, I don’t know, Google. Both Microsoft and Apple have campaigns against Google and its (so called) violation of user privacy, but the users themselves never seem to crib about Google, do they?! I think Thompson nailed it when he wrote:

“Privacy died a long time ago; pretending like Facebook killed it is naive …If you truly care about privacy then don’t use the Internet, credit cards, a mobile phone, the list goes on-and-on.”

For better or for worse, the Internet chose free and ads as its business model. Now we just have to live with it. Because going back to paid and ad-free is no longer an option. We burnt that bridge years back with Google and Wikipedia and Android.