Facebook intends to offer the information it holds on 150
million users to firms wanting to do market research.
Later this year,
reports The Guardian, Facebook will facilitate corporate polls
targeted at certain parts of the Facebook audience, based on the
information they have posted on their pages.
The move is likely to cause outcry among privacy campaigners and
many Facebook users - even though they have chosen to publicly
release the information on a website.
Last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated how the
polls would work at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The Guardian reports he asked users in Palestine and then Israel
about peace issues, before relaying the results back to the
audience within minutes.
He also polled more than 100,000 US users of Facebook about what
they thought about President Obama's fiscal stimulus package, and
got back responses for the audience to see - two out of five said
it was not enough.
