Facebook Boosts Marketing Impact via "Curating Identity" of Users

As Facebook expands its marketing services for the largest global brands, and works to broaden digital ad revenues, it has been pitching to multinational advertisers that they should create campaigns based on a "social by design" concept.  The goal is to help marketers foster brand "communities" of fans and supporters who can promote the product or service to their friends, which has become a new and very important focus of contemporary global ad campaigns.

Of interest to those concerned about accountability and transparency in the digital arena should be one aspect of Facebook's social design approach.  In addition to encouraging the use of "profile data...to personalize the user experience in your app so that it feels familiar, relevant and trusted by default," Facebook informs developers that they should link the data to a goal called "Curating Identity."  How do they suggest that be done?  Facebook explains that: "Users share and interact with others because self expression feels good and rewarding. Help them learn more about themselves and curate their identity."

The so-called curating of a person's "identity" to benefit a product, a cause, a politician should be accompanied by safeguards ensuring transparency, accountability and user control.  The FTC and EU privacy regulators, as well as privacy authorities in Asia/Pacific, Latin America and elsewhere, need to continue to pry open how Facebook uses its platform to gather and harvest for targeted marketing the data and behaviors of its users [such as its recent move permiting online gambling applications].  CDD will be helping!