Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Facebook Lockout Period Ends



Picking on Facebook seems like beating a dead horse these days.  However, it bears comment that the lockout period for insiders to sell their Facebook shares has ended, and as predicted by many, a whole host of them sold their shares and flooded the market and the share price has tanked to less than $20.

What is weird about this is that it was a predicted event - if you bothered to read the press and not the rah-rah cheerleading.  No one can say they did not see this coming.  So why did people buy the stock?  Because people are idiots - look around you.

A friend of mine logged onto Facebook and I saw her "feed" which included a comment that Suzie Q went to the outlet mall and shopped at something or other store.  This is where Facebook is trying to go, to get you to act as an advertisement for the places you shop and the products you buy.  It is creepy to the nth degree.

On the TeeVee at the same friend's house, a new report (repeated six times, so I did not miss it) about a Facebook camera/scanner that will be mounted at the entrance of various businesses to track your every movement and then publicize where you went and what you bought.

"Uncle Fred went to the XXX Adult theater and bought a dildo!   342 of his friends LIKE this!!"

Um, creepy weird invasion of privacy.  And people will sign up for this?  Well, they won't, but they have the option of "opting out" of it.

Of course, the ultimate "opting out" of Facebook is to simply close the account, which I think I will do, once I migrate my photos to Picasa.  There is an app to do this automatically, although you lose the captions and it does require Chrome, which sucks.

Oh, our mighty corporate overlords!  How can we serve them better?  By voting for Romney, of course!