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Professor: Facebook Fatally Flawed
Bruce Nussbaum -- a Parsons professor and former assistant managing editor for Business Week -- suggests that Facebook may have a "fatal" business model, and its ongoing privacy issues are proof. But
don't take Nussbaum's word for it. "I know because my students at Parsons The New School For Design tell me so," Nussbaum writes in Harvard Business Review.
"They live on Facebook and they are furious at it." More threatening still, "At the moment, [Facebook] has an audience that is at war with its advertisers ... Not good." Nussbaum believes that Facebook's success is the result of helping adolescents realize "a deep Western cultural longing" to connect in a seemingly private space. "Think digital tree house," he says. Unfortunately, "Facebook's business model ... demands the opposite." Worse still, "Facebook is behaving as though it owned not only its proprietary technology platform but the friendship networks created on it ... It doesn't."
"They live on Facebook and they are furious at it." More threatening still, "At the moment, [Facebook] has an audience that is at war with its advertisers ... Not good." Nussbaum believes that Facebook's success is the result of helping adolescents realize "a deep Western cultural longing" to connect in a seemingly private space. "Think digital tree house," he says. Unfortunately, "Facebook's business model ... demands the opposite." Worse still, "Facebook is behaving as though it owned not only its proprietary technology platform but the friendship networks created on it ... It doesn't."
