Who needs to run a Social Network when you've got all that User Purchase Data?

From the Thoughts of The Chairman Dept:

OK, got the Grovel out the way....now that every visitor to the Facebook affiliate site gets to tell Facebook what they are buying, the rationale for actually bothering to run a Social Network goes away somewhat.....

Social Networks are:

- Time - and more critically, labour - consuming
- Full of Bolshie people who want service improvements an argue
- Cost a lot for server and bandwidth

A much better business is to:

- Put a script on every retail site you can, passing purchase data of every visitor back to you - they don't even have to belong to Facebook !
- Collate and Mine that data and then resell it back to the sites and anyone else who wants it

Mind you, its probably worth keeping the actual Social Net going for a while until enough Vendor sites are signed up, then sell the SocNet to some desperate Old Stream Media Co - or maybe to GOOG, they seem to be buying all of Web 2.0 up these days

After all, so long as they have enough dead sheep and zombies, the users will never notice.....

Heck, might as well give the buggers the email stuff they're whining about, save the earache....

Hmmm...hope no-one starts to call for boycotting the affilliate sites...that'd be a blow.