Methinks the Telegraph was hoping to spark controversy when they published this article yesterday:
Facebook is planning to exploit the vast amount of personal information it holds on its 150m members by creating one of the world’s largest market research databases.
In an attempt to finally monetise the social networking site, once valued at $15bn (£10.4bn), it will soon allow multinational companies to selectively target its members in order to research the appeal of new products. Companies will be able to pose questions to specially selected members based on such intimate details as whether they are single or married and even whether they are gay or straight.
And yes, were it true, that would definitely be . . . well, if not cause for alarm, at least attention-getting. Let me say it again: were it true.
Because it’s not. Here’s what really happened, as gathered from TechCrunch and AllFacebook:
Facebook made a presentation at the World Economic Forum that showed off a cool real-time polling tool, one that could replace product research focus groups.
When the Telegraph saw how awesome this was, they called up FB for comment, and spoke to Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi (okay, so she’s also the global markets director and thus probably the right contact person for a UK newspaper). Randi said that the business research prospects are awesome. Change the context a little and voil
Tags: advice, business, facebook, internet, marketing, marketing-jobs, marketing-pilgrim, monitoring, prweb-newswire, reputation, reputation-me, research, rumors, social, social-media, telegraph, world