Snooping for Dollars: Facebook cashing in on "friends"

By GottaLaff

Write this on your Facebook wall:

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.

I de-activated my account about a year ago, for a year or so, because of privacy issues like this. I recently re-activated. But if this is how Facebook treats their friends, they may lose me for good this time.

FYI: If you are my friend on Facebook, you just got an "event invitation" notifying you of what I just posted. Consider it a public service announcement.

...[B]ut the company’s attempts at systematic market research have failed repeatedly, with users protesting the privacy invasion. Guess how they’ll greet this latest bit of news?