In the past week, social networking site Facebook filed documents with the US government which will allow it to sell its shares of stock to the general public. According to estimates, the worth of the company would be at least $75 billion. However, Facebook does not makes money through cars, widgets, inventories of phones and other things, so you might be wondering that how the billion dollar company makes money; well it is simple because it makes cash through my data and yours.
Facebook functions by selling ad space to different companies, whoever wants to buy it. These companies have their way of reaching us. Facebook helps them by using the slightest bit of information we have provided them with and if all your details are on the website, there will be no problem for advertisers to target market and get their ads to you. Information such as education, employment, likes, dislikes, age, marital status and all others are used by Facebook to display ads that will go with our specifications. The way the social networking site target markets is stunning.
In Europe, people have rights to find out what kind of data companies have regarding them but things aren’t the same when it comes to United States. Last year, Facebook generated $3.2 billion in revenue which is 85 percent of the company’s entire revenue. However, as compared to Facebook, Google takes the lead as it earned 10 times more than what Facebook did through analyzing what consumers were sending through Gmail and what they were looking for on the internet through typing in the search bar at Google. Last year, Google’s advertising revenue was $36.5 billion.
Apart from Facebook and Google, there are hundreds and hundreds of other companies who use people’s online data by depositing cookies or other kinds of tracking tools in their browsers or in their computers.
