Facebook - The Product is YOU

Here are two recent articles on Facebook's latest evolution:

With 'real-time' apps, Facebook is always watching - 

This article discusses how Facebook is developing context-specific applications and information exchange. Remember Web 3.0 & "contextual" web.

Does Facebook really care about you?

In this article, media scholar and critic Doug Rushkoff discusses the changes in Facebook's newsfeed, contextual web, and why we don't trust facebook, but still gladly give it all our info... "on Facebook we're not the customers. We are the product."

We are not Facebook's customers at all. The boardroom discussions at Facebook are not about how to help little Johnny make more and better friendships online; they are about how Facebook can monetize Johnny's "social graph" -- the accumulated data about how Johnny makes friends, shares links and makes consumer decisions. Facebook's real customers are the companies who actually pay them for this data, and for access to our eyeballs in the form of advertisements. The hours Facebook users put into their profiles and lists and updates is the labor that Facebook then sells to the market researchers and advertisers it serves.

Finally,