Everybody is talking about Google+. And, perhaps, rightly so. But I couldn't help but think about a quote last year from MetaFilter:
If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.
I don't know about you, but I have grown accumstomed to using many free services on the internet. But we live in a capitalistic society. Companies are in business to make money, not to promote the overall good. So if a company is providing you a free service, you are the product being sold!
Let's continue with the Google+ example. The service is provided to the user free of charge. So how is the user the product being sold? The user is giving Google all sorts of information: his personal and professional data, his network of friends, his interests, etc. Now imagine that amount of data for millions of users worldwide.
It would be naive to think that Google will simply do nothing with that data. Rather, Google can use that information with all sorts of capitalistic intent. In its simplest form, it could just be targeting advertisements - essentially selling you to their advertisers. But I'm sure there are a lot more subtle, yet profitable, alternatives.
The point is this: if you are being provided a free service, you are the product. Your data. Your time. Your clicks. Your mind.
Will that stop me from using these free services? No. But I think it's important to at least be aware that I am not a customer; I'm a product.
You should read a book called The Attention Economy. Actually user's of ad-funded services are paying for the service. They pay for it with one of the scarcest resources they have. Their attention.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting is that the service can be used without paying the attention fee, if one uses an ad-blocker. It's about as close as anyone can get to obtaining the ever elusive "free lunch".