Prof. Richard Smith

On CKNW, host Sean Leslie asked SFU Communication prof Richard Smith if the multi-billion-dollar size of Facebook’s planned share offering is surprising.
Smith: “I guess you have to ask yourself who do you know who isn’t on Facebook. All that membership, and all that stuff you’re uploading, is attracting a huge audience and that audience is something they can potentially turn into dollars so, yeah, I’m not surprised. . . .
“The people who consume it also produce it, so Facebook doesn’t have armies of people creating photographs or videos. We do that for them. They have their expenses, obviously, to run a huge operation like that, but, importantly, the content comes from the audience themselves. “I think what Facebook has really done is made it possible to do something that human beings really love to do, which is socialize. It’s made it possible to do it faster, quicker over greater distances, with more people. But it’s not so much changed us as it has sort of unleashed social tendencies that we’ve always had.”

The interview moved on to Facebook’’s ability to target users with ads that relate to their preferences and interests.
Smith: “They know everything that we put up there, all the comments we make. You talk about cars, they’ll put up car ads for you. And they have all the implied things, from your age and where you log in, all that sort of stuff. So it’s the ultimate in advertising tools and they’re going to exploit that.
“We put it up there, so my message to people would be: Enjoy Facebook for what it is, but what it is, is a publicity place and it’s not for your private information.”

Download or Stream the CKNW Interview

Smith also did an interview on QMFM Radio as well as an interview regarding mass hysteria: Download or Stream the CKNW Interview

Prof. Peter Chow-White

The Vancouver Sun, in a front-page story, quoted SFU Communication prof Peter Chow-White: “These free services they give, they are not free. They may not cost money, but we are entering into an agreement, we are getting something for free. But what we are going to give up is our privacy, at least with that company.’”
The quote was lifted from an earlier Sun blog on social media, which now has been picked up by the Calgary Herald.
Read the Calgary Herald article

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Posted: Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 @ 3:08 pm
Categories: News.
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