Facebook Leans In - How Facebook Is Really Just A Data Set That Lets Advertisers Micro-target You

Ever since Facebook’s ballyhooed, bungled I.P.O., its share price has languished, with Wall Street asking when the social-media giant is going to grow up and make money. From confidential reports, visits to the company’s sprawling campus, and interviews with its press-shy founder and C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, and C.O.O. Sheryl Sandberg, Kurt Eichenwald pieces together the largely unnoticed shift in Facebook strategy: new content, new algorithms, and new alliances, combined to power a marketing model that could have the rest of the world scrambling to catch up.  

Some companies say they have begun to use Facebook not only to interact with customers but also to find out what kind of products they want. 

“We want to put the power in the hands of consumers so they create our brands with us,” says Debbie Weinstein, the vice president of global media at Unilever, the multi-­national consumer-goods company.

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http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2013/05/facebook-future-mark-zuckerberg-sheryl-sandberg