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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | Branding and Privacy | | | However, as Facebook became more popular, the brand strategy changed from one of exclusivity to one of inclusivity. Facebook’s brand is now based on its users. People and institutions sign up for and remain on Facebook because their friends, family, students, coworkers, fans, consumer base, etc. all have accounts. Just like Apple consumers, Facebook users believe they need Facebook in order to stay in contact with friends. Users believe they need Facebook more than Facebook needs the user. As a result, Facebook is becoming ubiquitous both in homes, and on the net. | |
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As analyses of brands, it seems to me there's less here than meets
the eye. Mr Jobs had a particular approach, which was not only
embodied in Apple, but also in NeXT? , all the way along. The "1984"
ad; "think different," with its appropriation of dead non-conformist
intellectuals; the faceless iPod customers; the design of the
stores--all were intended to achieve a particular "political"
outcome: the absolute empowerment of the invisible architect,
creating the illusion of freedom in a horde of cultists. They all,
particularly the "1984" ad, built the brand on the irony of
conformist non-conformism. That plus "cool technology for tech
dummies," and "artists' tools made by the Artist" were the
architectural elements of the brand.
Facebook's brand, on the other hand, is supposed to be transparent
facing the victim: Facebook's face is the face of your friends. A
man in the middle attack works by making the man in the middle
invisible. Facing the investor, Facebook's brand is "we're spying on
everybody." Which is a variant of the original Zuckerberg message to
undergraduates: "we know everyone you want to fuck better than you
do."
| | | Convenience Over Privacy
The Problem | |
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< | Ever since cavemen learned to hunt in groups instead of individually hunting, humans have valued convenience over privacy. We give up some privacy to have meaningful (or trivial) interactions with each other all the time. Yet at this time in the digital age, third party "net corporations"—those that provide products or services on or related to the internet—know and remember more about their consumers than ever before. The average consumer is, at best, unaware of the extent to which his privacy is being sacrificed and traded. At worst, he knows his privacy is compromised, yet he does nothing and remains complacent, choosing instead to enjoy the convenience of Facebook through Google’s Chrome on an iPad. | >
> | Ever since cavemen learned to hunt in groups instead of individually hunting, humans have valued convenience over privacy.
I'm not sure those are the tradeoffs involved in hunting. Maybe
there's another way to say what you need to say here. If what you
need to say is that this is a human universal rather than a cultural
formation, I'm not persuaded by mere assertion, and it would be good
to see some evidence. I find it difficult to believe, given that
"privacy" and "convenience" are cultural formations, often absent,
surely historically relatively recent in our societies, and therefore
not the underlying terms in the universal.
We give up some privacy to have meaningful (or trivial) interactions with each other all the time. Yet at this time in the digital age, third party "net corporations"—those that provide products or services on or related to the internet—know and remember more about their consumers than ever before. The average consumer is, at best, unaware of the extent to which his privacy is being sacrificed and traded. At worst, he knows his privacy is compromised, yet he does nothing and remains complacent, choosing instead to enjoy the convenience of Facebook through Google’s Chrome on an iPad. | | | A Solution
Some state that privacy is dead, and perhaps it is at this very moment, but it doesn’t have to be. A number of factors must be met before consumers can reclaim (some of) their privacy. | | | Third, and most importantly, the new competing companies must have superior marketing techniques. They will not be able to depend on the consumer to make an educated decision to leave Facebook for a more private alternative. Unfortunately, the consumer must be tricked into wanting privacy. He must believe that the alternative was marketed specifically for him, and once he is hooked, he must subconsciously believe he needs the alternative more than it needs him. Because he does. | |
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> | In the end, this says that better privacy will have to be brought to
the market for services, and that it will have to be sold as
something other than privacy. Perhaps you mean it has to be more
"convenient" than Facebook, or more "cool" than Apple. I can't quite
tell. But the primary conclusion is that privacy can't be sold to
consumers as privacy. Are you sure? I don't, after reading this
essay, know why. | | | | |
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