The Real Price You Pay for "Free" Online Services
This excellent article from CNET discusses the new paradigm in detail. While companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter provide you with free services, what they get in return is much more valuable than what they could charge users for their services. They get free information about you, your life, and your preferences, as well as every single time you search, tweet, and post updates.
With Google at over 2 billions users, Facebook at over 845 million users, and Twitter at over 300 million users, these companies have data stores which are literally worth billions of dollars. They use this information to sell ads on their own network (e.g., Facebook generated $3.2 Billion last year in advertising revenue – not bad huh?), or sell the information to companies like DataSift.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
The Real Price of 'Free' Online Services by Kyle Gonzales
via lewrockwell.com
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