freaky Facebook?
"Critics see it as one more freaky Facebook mind game that reveals just how much the site knows about you and your life."
Most Facebook users will just ignore it like the bulk of the 'extras' that appear and disappear.
In another move by Facebook to predict user behaviour, the human herding site has introduced Suggested Events: a feature that will offer bright ideas for what you should do on Friday night. Zuckerberg knows how your little mind works. Suggested Events will replace Friends' Events in the lefthand column of the Facebook home …
will their suggestions lead you to places that their Advertisers, sorry sponsors want?
If I went last year to Greenland* and the year before to Kergulen* and it suggested Miami or some 'All Inclusive' resort somewhere I would not be very happy.
Curmudgeon? Me? Yep.
* I did go to both of these places with the past 5 years.
You have to ask? Why yes, of course. They're turning your "lookit, I wus here!"-posts into excuses to have advertisers pay them for "targeted" (and thus more valuable) advertising. Which it of course spins as a service to you, though in reality you are the product.
Like the tagging of photographs; that gets them more info about who you mingle with. This is useful for things like, oh, pitch certain things it thinks you might like, around your birthday. Not pitched to you, but to your present-buying buddies.
Maybe they'll stretch up that picture recognition thing to discern brands and from there "give competitors an unique opportunity" to have a go at it. For a price, of course. Again, you are the product sold to their advertisers. Facebook is busily out-googling google in the up close and personal advertising market, in fact.
One interesting thing our gumshoe vultures at el reg could try and ferret out is just how much, if any, the big advertisers and "social" shops are in bed with each other. For exactly this sort of mined data.