The boy-coder turns big dreamer

If opening up Facebook API ever had a purpose, this seems to be it. The Mark Zuckerberg tell all.

Social Networking sites (SNs) like Facebook and MySpace after amassing millions of users, have eventually put them to the best use. They have too much of your personal stuff, likes and preferences that can’t go unexploited by advertisers. But when they say that’s their purpose, they won’t find many takers. So what do they do?

First open up the API for developers to celebrate. Ask them to develop cool applications that could suck in more users. That makes it easier for you to define habits, categorize users and segment the market in terms of early adopters. Now go present those findings in a platter so that advertisers could close in for the kill. Users like you’ve nowhere to hide, just stick around like suckers and be part of a captive audience for them to infect you.

Then I turn to Nick Carr. Here's why he calls it a social graft.

Quote the Zuckster: "The next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today."

Yes, today is the first day of the rest of advertising's life.”

So that’s it. As Nick says “Marketing is conversational, says Zuckerberg, and advertising is social. There is no intimacy that is not a branding opportunity, no friendship that can't be monetized, no kiss that doesn't carry an exchange of value. The cluetrain has reached its last stop, its terminus, the end of the line.”

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Touche.

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