Everyone says that Facebook fights privacy because they grow by making you and everyone else, very public.  And that part is obvious, if they don’t encourage you to be less private they have no network.  But there is a countertrend to that and that is post IPO monetization.  Now that Facebook got 1 billion people to share their intimate and mostly irrelevant moments they hope to make money by you being so desperate for the attention that you got used to having that you start paying NOT to be private.  In order to achieve this Facebook is now making you less popular, or more private against your will.

So the new Facebook, the post IPO “have to meet the next quarter numbers” Facebook, is paradoxically more private, unless you pay of course. But if you don’t pay, less is disclosed about you to others because those who pay increasingly crowd you out.  And paradoxically a new privacy will be achieved.

Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars

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