The Facebook Myth

7 Mar 2013

I am not entirely sure why this particular issue frustrates me so much. As a person who runs their business off social media platforms I am now subjected to puerile statues such as of "Don't tag me in an event I am not part of" and "Facebook is not free advertising". The thing is Facebook is free advertising. That's the essence of it.

Despite what you may think, the purpose of Facebook is not for your family albums and LOL cats memes. The essence of Facebook is to generate billions of dollars in advertising revenue. In fact, according to Tech Crunch 89% of the social media giant's earnings are based on targeting brands to their users.

Finding you on Facebook

As more and more people are freeing themselves from television advertising through the use of streaming and downloads, the big brands need to target us where we spend increasing amounts of our focused attention. This has led them to Facebook.

In the race for user attention, Facebook is king. Mashable breaks down the numbers, "The average US user spent a whopping seven hours and 46 minutes on Facebook in August. That's a full 15.5 minutes the average American spends on Facebook every single day. Compare that to the average Google user, who spent just one hour and 46 minutes on the site." Now that is just an average. I know I (and many people in my age bracket) probably spend a lot more time than that checking updates, viewing pages and reposting images.

Keeping you informed

I'm pretty sure that the people who really keep the advertisers interested are people like me. We post at least 10 times a day and you click "like" without hesitation. We keep you informed about the world around you. We introduce you to new apps. We show you new exciting brands. We power the advertising-fed social machine on which you spend at least 15 minutes a day of your precious time. While most of our actions are seemingly innocent, we are drawing you into the world of big brands.

I know you tell everyone that you hate those ads and little recommendations in your Facebook sidebar, but let's share a secret. Just between you and me. You click on them... don't you?

So in the spirit of keeping the monster alive, tell your annoying Facebook friends (the kind that post half-naked pictures of themselves and constantly talk about the gym) "Welcome to the free advertising generation". The innovators thank you.