It always seemed fairly clear to me that the whole "like us on Facebook" thing was Facebook treating businesses as sharecroppers, harnessing their marketing eff

It always seemed fairly clear to me that the whole "like us on Facebook" thing was Facebook treating businesses as sharecroppers, harnessing their marketing effort, with no promise of allowing them to keep the eventual rewards. Unfortunately, it seems like many businesses bought into it because there weren't any very good alternative for a non-technical organization to keep in touch with their customers (except maybe Twitter).