The “Facebook sells your data” myth is too often rehashed. Facebook has done studies and actually found that your personal info is not all that valuable in and

The “Facebook sells your data” myth is too often rehashed. Facebook has done studies and actually found that your personal info is not all that valuable in and of itself. Your likes, statuses, friends and photos do not provide meaningful targeting data. (Age and geography are meaningful, but those are already available with traditional media). Facebook’s huge money maker is its ability to let other companies target their own customers on the Facebook platform. If Nordstrom keeps track of its website customers and what products they look at, and can then target those same users directly on Facebook with related products, they’re willing to pay way more for that kind of targeting than they are “women in their 40s who ‘like’ shopping”. Facebook supports both, but facebooks real success comes from letting companies leverage their own data on the Facebook platform. That and the fact that they have a billion users log in per day. If any other site had that kind of traffic they’d be killing it regardless of the personal data they possessed.