International Law

Using Facebook's power for YOU.

By David T.S. Fraser

Rob Hyndman has a great post about Facebook and why he's finding it increasingly boring. The site has loads of users' personal information. It knows who your friends are and who their friends are. It knows what you post and it knows who you are closest with. It knows your social network and what's going on in it.

So, Rob asks, why isn't Facebook using that information to be more useful for the user? Why doesn't it introduce you to friends of friends who you'd probably like? Why doesn't it suggest TV shows? Or let you rate your music and share your recommendations among similarly-minded friends (or foafs). Loads of websites take your personal information and offer a single service in return. But Facebook and social networking sites take loads of personal information, analyze it to death but don't offer the users with a complete return on that personal information. Good questions, Rob. For those who opt in, that would be the Web 2.0 killer app. See: robhyndman.com » Blog Archive » What Facebook Needs to do to Not be Boring.

Full post as published by The Canadian Privacy Law Blog on March 24, 2008 (boomark / email).