Facebook's marketing goldmine may be crock of shite

And before the Facebook freaks get all huffy and put a bounty on my head, I'll have you know that the title is actually the Register's. See here. The story goes like this: Since Facebook's 40 million users enter a bunch of bogus numbers for things like age, height, etc., all of the trends and factoids gleaned from Facebook's data are probably bunk. Or they're just common sense things, like college students drink beer on the weekends, and Microsoft employees pick their noses at work. That sort of thing. It doesn't do anybody any good. It's kind of like how we know Oracle users are unmarried nerds who eat dinner alone and watch The Simpsons before going to bed at 11. Despite what you might think, that kind of information doesn't help us. Well, okay. It does a little bit. I mean, we know that we should use sexy women in our advertising and sponsor speed dating events. But that's it.

So what's next for Mark Zuckerberg? Why, more investments, of course. While announcing the new fbFund last night, Zuckerberg said that Facebook is "just looking for innovative and disruptive things." Which makes perfect sense, when you think about it. When the demographic numbers don't add up, just go and virtually knee your friends in the nuts. Sounds like fun. You know, I hope somebody goes and creates a virtual nose-picking application that lets you flick boogers on your friends. The Microsoft people would have a field day with that.