Skip to main content

About Face (book)

Always on the offensive and decidedly a cult making billions of ad dollars by engaging people in an addictive trance the business known to the world as Facebook had to do an about face of sorts.

Meek and perhaps humbled the CEO wrote to its flock that he had made some mistakes and was sorry.  That this brand has managed to be a master at studying human psychology and implementing a software that can take advantage is nothing but pure capitalism.  Inherently nothing wrong with that.

What they slipped up on was the equally inherent embedded promise.  A promise to safeguard what might be sacrosanct.  People's personal stuff.  Stuff that matters to a politically motivated entity.  And who these days is not politically motivated?  Right.  Really?  It is okay if I decide to share it but just don't come expecting to see what I think is hot or how I slept last night and what I think about my president.

Therefore the back pedaling and mea culpa.  Print ads for an online giant.  Social media they call it.  All media is social.  Otherwise why discuss it in the first place?  Not sure where that redundancy was born - I suspect in the media. 

Anyway I digress.

Time will tell if this FB fad blows up or people continue to resort to congratulate individuals that live in the same household so that others might see.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Of Jims and Johns

Here is another essay on the subject of first names. As in birth names. Or names provided to an offspring at birth. While the developed world tends to shy away from the exotic like Refrigerator or Coca Cola for their new production there is a plethora of Jims and Johns and Bobs or Robs. Speaking of which I do not think there is a categoric decision point at the time of birth if a child will be hereafter called as Bob. I mean have not yet met a toddler called Bob or Rob for that matter. At some point though the parental instinct to mouth out multiple syllables runs out and they switch from calling the crawler Robert to simply Robbie to Rob. Now speaking of - it is strange that the name sounds like something you would not want Rob to do - i.e. Rob anyone. Then why call someone that? After all Rob Peter to Pay Paul is not exactly a maxim to live a young life? Is it? Perhaps Peter or Paul might want to have a say in it? Then there is this matter of going to the John. Why degrad...

Presumptive Society

Today's world is hyper connected.  I am not so sure what it means but you hear it a lot.  It is probably hyper but not sure how connected it is.  Sugar (fermented or not) is available in many ways than before and so getting hyper is easy.  It is probably more a threat than cocaine since it is sold legally. And what is this connected stuff?  Most people I encounter seem disconnected from reality.  So going back to this assumption that we are connected there are subtle and no so subtle instances of how brands and companies and middle men try to portray someone - A linkedin profile for somebody working for X years at a place advertises to the connected network that so and so is CELEBRATING X years @ Such and Such Inc. Do we know if (s)he is celebrating or cringing?  Perhaps a better way to portray will be - So and So LASTED X years @ such & such inc. Then it exhorts the readership to go ahead and congratulate them for this lasting effe...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...