Essay--Facebook Sucks: Part III

You aren’t special. Neither am I. We are single users among billions. One point three, to be exact.  

Neither do any of us have lives to speak of. We—by all marketing appearances— share a vapid existence.

Vindu Goel, a tech reporter for the New York Times, wrote that Americans like us spend a fifth of our time on our mobile devices checking our Facebook feeds. Sounds absolutely droll and sadly pathetic. Useless, even. Except that our doing so makes shareholders very, very wealthy. 


Facebook exec’s reported a 72 % increase in revenues during the year’s first quarter. So, that’s good, right? That’s something. We generated $2.5 BILLION for them before Easter. Not bad, folks. Not bad at all.

With Facebook’s net income having almost tripled, investors are pleased.  When the company launches their new mobile advertizing schemes, profits will only continue to rise.

At the core of all this prosperity is The Zuck. Facebook co-founder and current CEO, Mark Zuckerman whose salary is but a buck a year has a personal stake in the company worth just shy of $24 billion. That’s a lot of worth. Mucho greenback. Wowza.

How much is all that money, really? Well, to put such wealth into perspective, know that Zuck’s net worth is almost 400,000 times more than that of the median US household. Named by Vanity Fair Magazine as one of the world’s most influential men, the lad’s just turned 30. 

Google and Twitter are his major mobile market competitors and all three will soon be dependent upon application install ads prompting—they hope-- Smartphone users to install new apps or to run those left dormant. “Cash Cows”, Goel calls ‘em, which brings into question how smart those Smartphone users really are given most of us aren’t reaping any of that stash.

Facebook is the numero uno Smartphone app and—according to The Zuck himself, 10 billion messages a day flow through its messaging and photo/video products. All those app installs and updates require users to agree to certain things, only one of which is the sharing of the “Friends” list.

Wouldn’t hurt to keep in mind that Zuck’s genius is in creating software for marketing purposes. This array of artificial intelligence acquires and relays back to him a gamut of user personal data, which he uses to send targeted pitches back to the users. It’s all legal, apparently, and widely—it would seem—accepted by users. Zuck’s managed not only to get into our heads, but also into our private, intimate interests and preferences. The Golden Boy’s indeed a intelligence mastermind, only his methods aren’t all that covert anymore.

In the end, it’s us holding these damn Smartphones. It’s us who line his pocket, and the rest of the protected 1 %. I myself have not, nor will I, update my phone app. I won’t. I’ve read the small print, researched what gets used how and I won’t do it. No offense Zuck, but you’re not the only one to buck the system and be forewarned, I’m bucking yours. It’s all I’ve got, after all--the option, and being a gal partial towards maximizing my prerogative I sure as hell am going to use it.