Facebook draws a bullseye on your profile
by Heidi Edelmuller
You probably completed your Facebook profile in the hope of showing your high school sweetheart (who dumped you at the Matric dance) that someone wanted to marry you after all. Oh, and that you’re now a brain surgeon and own a wine farm in Constantia.
Sure the information helps people to know what you have been up to since high school. But have you considered exactly how much information you’re giving away on this social networking site? And anyone with that kind of information is bound to use it for financial gain sooner or later.
According to the Inside Facebook blog, the popular social network’s new Flyers Pro advertising product allows advertisers to display PPC adverts to audiences segmented by:
- Profile Keywords - such as “PS3,” “Gucci,” or more niche interests
- Workplace - such as “Google”, or anywhere else recruiters might want to hire away top talent
- Relationship Status - those in a relationship, single, engaged, or married
- Political Views - people who call themselves liberal, moderate, or conservative
- Current Education Status - those in high school, college or alumni
If that’s not targeted, I don’t know what is!
Here’s an example of what the adverts look like:
The Quirk PPC team is trying out Flyers Pro right now. We will let you know how it goes…..
Comments
post a commentTotally Tim - Google have been recording your search habits for years. They keep this information for up to 18 months and use it to personalise your search results. The advantage is that Google can serve you better results, the disadvantage is that Google knows an uncomfortable amount of information about you - just think of how many searches you do?
Google however have also recently called for International Internet Privacy Standards in an attempt to show that they still abide by their company motto "Do no evil".
Posted by Heidi on 2007/09/18
Time to update my profile and add some time at google in my job history. Maybe some amazing company will come looking for my services, hehe.
Interesting read, it does make you think when you're putting up all this information about yourself... oh well.
Posted by Al on 2007/09/19
KeywordSpy.com a try for a keyword research tool, with results actually reflecting what advertisers are using at the current time.
Posted by susan on 2007/09/20
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Hmm, do you think Google web history (search history) will ever provide you with this sort of control? is this a possible, behind the scenes, reason for their service?
Posted by Tim on 2007/09/18