Your users are not the product you're selling

It's almost a cliché on the Internet these days that on sites and services that are mainly supported by advertising, you, the user, are not the customer; instead you are the product being sold to the real customers, the advertisers. For example just a few days ago, Bruce Schneier, known security blogger and the current Chief Security Technology Officer of British Telecom, apparently stated at a security conference that "It’s a myth that you are Facebook’s customer. You are Facebook’s product. You are a product to sell to Facebook’s customers".

While this idea hits a chord as it is sounds cynical and populist, it is a fallacy. It creates the impression that these big corporations such as Google and Facebook exploit you, makes you feel unimportant, replaceable and that infuriates you. You think, "these corporations might try to exploit me, but at least I understand the game they're playing, I'm not going to be their puppet". Once again, you feel being important, because at least you're not part of the clueless herd, you feel like being in control.

Stop and think for a moment. You get these services for free. Google is free of charge. Facebook is free. Most iPhone apps with advertising are free. Free, as in, you don't have to pay. I'm not saying you're not paying a price for using them some way or other, but you definitely don't have to pay a monetary fee for these services and applications.

Here's the thing: if you treat your users as a product, a commodity that can be replaced, if you don't respect your users, your readers, they will leave. No one likes not being respected. It makes you feel small, unimportant. It creates a cognitive dissonance. It's just like a restaurant; if you feel you're treated badly by the waiters, you simply leave and never come back. It's simple as that. Google and Facebook understand that. Rembember the famous Google "Parisian Love" TV commercial from last year's Superbowl?





This commercial is about how important part of your life Google is. They follow you through your life. Google is there when you're booking your flight, when you're searching a job and so on. You have your individual life and Google is part of it and it's important to them to always be there for you, no matter what individual path you're walking. This commercial is all about how important you, as an individual are for Google. Obviously, as a free service, they cannot provide you a fully personal experience with actual humans looking after you individually as their margins wouldn't allow that. But that doesn't mean you're not important.

Another example is the popular (and free) programming Q&A site, Stack Overflow and it's new generic version Stack Exchange. Users are everything for Stack Overflow. They create all the content. Their users are their most important asset. One of the reasons why some of the most brilliant developers hang out on Stack Overflow and create content for them for free is because they feel being respected. They don't feel like being products that are sold to advertisers and I seriously doubt that Jeff Atwood, one of the brains behind Stack Overflow, thinks that. Otherwise, they would end up as their original competitor, Experts Exchange.

It is true that in a "free" service model, there are three players: the provider, the users and the advertisers. However, the real commodities are the advertisers. You can always replace your advertisers, you can't replace your userbase. If you're not happy (or your users are not happy) with Google Ads or Amazon or whatever, you can always easily find some better advertising service. You can't just find users that make your advertisers happier. Google couldn't just replace it's users just to make the advertisers happier. You have to tailor the advertising to your users, not the other way around. To put it simply, you have to respect your users, even if they don't actually pay for your service.

Thanks for reading my blog post. This is my first blog post ever and it would really mean a lot to me if you shared your thoughts with me in the comments. Even a "you're an idiot, your blog is bad and you should feel bad" would be great.