WhatsApp To Give Phone Numbers To Facebook

Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 for $ 22 Billion.

If you agree to the new TOS (if you don´t you´ll have another 30 days to do so) WhatsApp will begin to share information about your usage of the app as well as your phone number with Facebook. 

Currently, Facebook is losing a few ad clients and is looking for ways to increase revenue. I have sold data mining projects for six years of my life, and I am fully aware of the gigantic amount of information an artificial neural network can predict from what feels like a tiny bit of info you share. 

WhatsApp will not (and could not because of the end to end encryption) share the content of your messages with Facebook. Currently, they will not share your profile name or picture. That might change. 

The information about when you are most active and whom you communicate with will be used by Facebook to complete the detailed profile they already have about you. They then can use the information to show you targeted ads.

If you do not mind the amount of information you are sharing with Facebook - fine. Just be aware that the few pieces of data you are sharing lead to far more knowledge about you than you might think.

An order of a specific wine in combination with a purchase of music from a certain artist might allow someone to predict that there is an 80 % possibility that you are gay or maybe that you are likely to purchase a book about dogs next.

On the day you get Diabetes your insurance (supposed they are using Business Intelligence tools) can predict nearly exactly what your next diseases will be and when you will die. And most importantly from the viewpoint of that health insurance: What you will cost until the day you die. 

When it comes to Facebook, I am not objective, and I will admit that. Every popular site has problems with bots, spam and wants to earn money. In my opinion, Facebook takes it to another level, though.

My coaching business is small, I am probably not even their ad-client target. Here´s a thought for those who are:

I am exaggerating here: Some days you can have the feeling that Facebook has become a community of meme posters, advertising clients, bots, hate speech, scam, spam, and fake profiles.

Mindless games, like for instance "Farm Ville" (Zynga) that is played by millions of people encourage their players (who often use a second profile so that nobody will see their game activity) to add tons of "neighbors" They are needed to advance in the game. Farm Ville is only one of many games with that principle.  Many gamers add hundreds of random people just for the purpose of advancing in games.

Obviously, there is no statistics available for: "How many games on Facebook make players click random strangers and create fake profiles". Just to give you an idea: Zynga's less popular game Poker has been played by 350 Million users (Source: Dean Takahashi, 2014) and Millions of users play it daily. This is not Zynga´s only game - and Zynga is only one of many producers who encourage people to use a second profile (as these games have a tendency to spam all of your friends if you are not very careful) and click random people.

I wonder ... what does that mean for the data quality? When advertisers pay tons of money to place ads that´s an important question, right?

The concept of making the owner of pages PAY so that people who "like" the page see the posts is ... well, it´s one where I can only wish Facebook best of luck.

Did you know that Facebook (unless you have a script blocker running or delete your cookies) follows you and sees which other sites you surf on?

Again, before you hand out your most precious possession, your data, make sure that you are fully aware of the amount of information you are giving out.

Facebook alternative beBee?

beBee is an affinity-based community. You could say that it takes the best of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and combines it with its own spin. It is not targeting LinkedIn. If you are in a position where you seek to connect with Top Management, like board members and such, you definitely want to use beBee as an addition. beBee offers employment ads. If you are looking for staff or a job you certainly want to check them out. 

How beBee works

People can follow each other and join what beBee calls "hives". Hives are groups that are focused on a specific topic or industry. What makes beBee unique is that people share their professional content as well as content about their hobbies and such. We talk about "authenticity" a lot. beBees concept is based on just that. What I have never experienced in any community before is that users actually READ your content (not just "like"). The amount of quality content and interaction is extremely high. 

The community is meanwhile 11.6 Million members large and growing fast. As of today, it is 99 % spam, scam and privacy breach free. I think I saw 2 MLM links and received 4 spam messages in the few weeks I am active there. 

Every site will analyze your data and your activity. Unlike Facebook, beBee shows no ads (as of today). Your data neither gets sold nor used for targeted marketing. beBee does not track what you do when you leave the site. 

I will write more about beBee in the next days, make sure to check back or sign up to my newsletter. 

Or ... if you like, have a look at my profile there: beBEE

I recommend that you hurry. As I said, the community is growing at high speed. As always - those who are there first will have an advantage and high visibility.