With Social Media fast becoming the King of Marketing, it’s about time us social media users really understood what we are letting ourselves in for.

Jennifer Golbeck gives the example of the ‘Curly Fry Conundrum‘ to explain what our social media ‘Likes’ really say…

She decides to use Facebook as just one example of where big data is collected on every single user, and why not when this particular social media network has over 1.2 billion users per month, making it the most used social network in the world!

Facebook lets people share photos, blog posts, product reviews, videos (think you get the idea) and more, even to the extent that Facebook now gives you the freedom to make your own online persona. Pretty crazy right? Well that’s not the half of it. Golbeck gives us an eye opening to the amount of personal data that is collected from our social media activity. Personal data that we as users have no control over at all, so much so, that we are no longer the customers, instead we are the products.

Data is stored not only from our purchase history, but also on our behaviour. Golbeck gives the example of a person liking a page for ‘Curly Fries’ – whilst this seems irrelevant, it’s not. Say one smart person likes the ‘Curly Fries’ page, then their smart friends see’s that they have liked it, so they then like it (do you see where this is going?) Big Data would then indicate that Smart people like Curly Fries. Sounds absurd doesn’t it? But according to Golbeck, this is how it works! Well, I don’t think so. This is just one example that shows how Big Data is not sufficient enough to work without human intelligence. Schroeder (2014) supports this proposing that Big Data is used to generate abstract knowledge, without prescriptiveness about how to use this knowledge to change behaviour.

Of course we know it is not true that smart people like Curly Fries – if it was true, I would be stuffing my face with Curly Fries in the hope of becoming “smarter”. It must also be noted that the example Golbeck is giving here is a case study on Facebook – a social media platform whereby people are highly influenced by the actions of others. “Sheep” springs to mind here – if one on my friends likes “Justin Bieber” on Facebook then the likelihood is that I will like “Justin Bieber” on Facebook because we are in the same circle of friends and all have similar interests

However, another example that Golbeck gives is of two parents who received baby products to their home. These two parents found out their daughter was pregnant thanks to Big Data. Through the girl’s actions on social media and purchase behaviour, data was collected and brought by a company. This Big Data contained the girls name, address, her purchase behaviour, her personal interests etc. and from this data collected, the company worked out she was pregnant and sent the girl baby products to her house as a marketing strategy – giving out freebies. Is this Big Data taking it one step too far? Hell yes it is, but it is out of our control.

So, next time that you “Like” a page on Facebook or make a purchase online, be aware of the big data that is being collected on you. Just because I like Jacobs Creek on Facebook and I recently purchased a bottle opener from Nisa, it doesn’t mean I need alcoholics anonymous sign up forms coming through my parents letterbox. I think you get my point.

Always think twice.

Golbeck, J. (2014) ‘The curly fry conundrum: Why social media “likes” say more than you might think’. [Video] <http://www.ted.com/playlists/56/making_sense_of_too_much_data> [accessed 30 April 2015]

Schroeder, R. (2014) ‘Big Data and the brave new world of social media research’. Original Research Article, [Online] Vol 1 (Issue 11). <http://bds.sagepub.com/content/1/2/2053951714563194.full.pdf+html> [accessed 30 April 2015]