Zainab Alshakhs

Sherrin Frances
ENGL 212
Date: March 30, 2015
Facebooks Ability in Using Big Data

Facebooks Ability in Using Big Data

Long time ago, people used to get along with each other through face-to-face meeting and
interview. At the same time, no one can know more than what they hear about anyone, unless they hear
it from their mouth. Nowadays, with the new developed era of technology, the social media has made it
easier for far people to be reached; simply, people cannot hide anything from the rest of the world. For
instance, Facebook has been the leading social media website since there are 750 million active users
around the globe (Sunshine). Therefore, Facebook has a remarkable amount of data, which is a
representation of peoples personal information from all over the globe. Facebook began as a social
media company that has an initial goal, which is giving people the chance to get along with each other
in a very simple way ("Will Greed Ruin Facebook Ads for Marketers"). Later, from the greediness that
they got from having lots of info, they lost their professionalism. They planted lots of cookies in their
users devices in order to know their trends and to classify them appropriately. Even if their goal,
behind it, is to make their website more comfortable to their users, they are breaching their users
privacy without the users permission ("Will Greed Ruin Facebook Ads for Marketers"). Facebook plays
a huge role in employment, politics and marketing.
Furthermore, Facebook has been the best social media where it allows people to have a
profile. This profile has information about the person who owns it. Facebook users can upload pictures,
write their thoughts, feelings, celebrate birthdays, chat with others, look up news, and so much more
("What You Can Do on Facebook"). From all those things, people can find information about anyone
by typing their name, email address, phone number, and other general information. These profiles like a
person's diary, it even holds events that a person went to or scheduled; people can figure out someone's
personality from those information ("New Stanford"). Even though, Facebook does not protect the
privacy of its users, people usually express their thoughts and photos for the world to see.
Moreover, finding jobs is not easy in a world like this, people are always struggling to find a
suitable job that helps them provide for their families. Nowadays, most people are not trained to do the

job they are qualified to do, so they go on Facebook to make friends who can help them better
understand what to do to get the job they want. Therefore, many companies rely on social media to hire
and fire their employees, and people can use Facebook to have their dream job. Facebook hold so much
information about people. Therefore, imagine the tremendous amount of information that a company
could access for any of their employees by following their tweets in Twitter, watching their photos in
Instagram, or visiting their personal Facebook pages. This information about the employees personal
lives does not necessarily help in the best interest of the company (Sunshine). Actually, sometimes this
information may help in firing an employee, or maybe shows secrets that the employee does not want
to share with his colleges (Sunshine). As mentioned before, Facebook is changing their privacy policy
continuously according to what benefits comes back to them from their users information. A lot of
companies are buying that information from Facebook itself while it is supposed to be the protector of
the users privacy (Facebook). Facebook did not stop at this point; its hunger drove it to buy two huge
companies that carry much private information about different people. Those two companies are
Whatsapp and Instagram.
The political race has been increasing in a significant way where there are parties, and each
party is trying to win the race. At the end, there will be only two parties, and each party start playing a
big role in this race. In addition, each party try to find new ways to succeed more and faster, and one
way to do that is to use social media, especially Facebook. Facebook, have claimed a lot of media
consideration throughout the most recent few years, and are presently beginning to turn into the subject
of scholarly investigation. Facebook's huge client bases, the observable measures of information they
create, and their rising political impact where "Barack Obama procured 1.5 million companions on
Facebook amid his first US presidential race fight", has typically pulled in the consideration of social
and political specialists (Wills).
Furthermore, marketing is just like politics; they both need information about people to
succeed. Politics need the information about people to better understand what they want so they can
provide it for them and it is all about the voters. Similarly, marketing has the same goal but different
means where marketers needs the information about people to better understand what they want so they
can sell their products. Marketers uses Facebook as well as politics, because Facebook has an
enormous data about people. "Social media gives marketers a voice and a way to communicate with

peers, customers and potential consumers. It personalizes the "brand" and helps you to spread your
message in a relaxed and conversational way "(Lake).
In conclusion, the data that is extracted from Facebook so very big, and many people are using
thins data; such as, employment, politics and marketing. People can find big data very useful by
changing them into information. However, many people does not know that politicians, companies and
even travel agencies are using their information. Facebook does not respect peoples' private
information, but people keep publicize themselves just for the sake of popularity.

Nberger, V., & Cukier, K. (2013). Big data: A revolution that will transform how we
live, work, and think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Lake, L. (n.d.). Social Media: What is the Role in Marketing? Retrieved March 30, 2015, from
http://marketing.about.com/od/strategytutorials/a/socialmediamktg.htm

New Stanford research finds computers are better judges of personality than friends and family. (n.d.).
Retrieved March 29, 2015, from http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/january/personality-computerknows-011215.html

So many job openings, but so hard to get hired. (2014, January 1). Retrieved March 29, 2015, from
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/so-many-job-openings-but-so-hard-to-get-hired/

Sunshine, J. (n.d.). How Companies Use Facebook To Hire And Fire Employees (INFOGRAPHIC).
Retrieved March 28, 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/new-infographic-showshow-companies-target-unemployed_n_918816.html

What You Can Do on Facebook. (n.d.). Retrieved March 29, 2015, from
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-you-can-do-on-facebook.html

Wills, D., & Reeves, S. (2009). Facebook as a political weapon: Information in social networks. British
Politics, 4(2), 265-281. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/bp.2009.3

Will Greed Ruin Facebook Ads for Marketers? (2013, August 22). Retrieved March 28, 2015, from
http://www.acquisio.com/blog/social-media/will-greed-ruin-facebook-ads-marketers

Facebook, Facebook privacy policy, (2015). Retrieved March 30, 2015, from
http://www.facebook.com/policy.php