Facebook's Future Rests on Knowing You Even Better

Less time spent on Facebook could deal a huge blow to Facebook’s once-ironclad business. But the company has a plan to counteract that: It is raising its prices. A lot. Even as Facebook reported that users collectively spent 50 million fewer hours a day on the network in the fourth quarter, revenue during that period increased 47 percent to $13 billion. Facebook pulled this off by boosting the average price per ad by 43 percent.

Unfortunately for users, mining our personal data to better sell us stuff is the future of Facebook’s business. Over the years, Facebook has managed to rise above criticism over privacy and transparency by pointing to settings that purport to give users control over what they share and with whom. But those settings are complex and not well understood by users. Further, Facebook does not give users full control over their data.