NEW YORK — Facebook announced today that it has struck a new deal with eBay to begin to convert the dignity of its 65 million users into profit. Under the new agreement, Facebook users will receive a “news feed” story whenever one of their friends writes something stupid in their “status update,” chooses to “throw a sheep” at someone for no reason, or posts a picture of themselves acting like an idiot.
Users will then have a chance to bid on the lost dignity on eBay and claim it as their own, until such time as they lose it again by adding the “Which Spice Girl Are You?” application or by sending someone a gnome for their “My Garden” or inviting their friends to “Spank Me.”
Facebook’s 23- year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the move “the next step in the evolution of e-commerce.”
In keeping with Facebook’s commitment to member privacy, advanced controls will provide users with the opportunity to decide whether or not they want to auction specific humiliating actions by choosing to “Opt-in” or “Don’t opt out.”
The agreement follows a similar program by MySpace, where users can now pay people to stop inflicting on others their poor taste in music.
The trend, called behavioral targeting or “hyper-abasement,” leverages the way social networks work in a new and potentially revolutionary way.
“This highly targeted system isn’t just about making money on the web,” Zuckerberg said, “but about the deep-seated desire inside every one of us to make ourselves look ridiculous in public.”
“Now you can squander your self-esteem in public from the privacy of your own home,” he added. “And we should all feel good about the fact that someone is finally profiting from what all these people have been giving away for free.”
