Hey, Facebookers: There's No Free Lunch

Facebook's a for-profit company, not a public service, so Patt Morrison at the Los Angeles Times can't understand why so many users are angry and hurt about the site trying to make money from harvested private information. "Did anyone really think Facebook was in this for the cozy 'Kumbayah' feeling?" she wonders. "And did anyone also believe that Coke really wanted to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony?"

Your personal data, with its value to marketers, is the "oil gusher" of social networking, Morrison writes. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and there's no free social networking, either, she argues. If you're going to use a service like Facebook—or something as simple as a store loyalty card—you need to decide if it's worth surrendering your information to marketing companies, "and you have to wise up about what you’re agreeing to in the first place," she adds.
(More Facebook stories.)