Soylent Green is Facebook - People as a Product

As everyone knows 'Soylent Green is People' and indeed its taken nearly 30 years for people to really make a product whose only ability is to sell the value of people, people cut into cross sections, relationships and information.  This is what all social media companies are really selling, they aren't selling TO people they are selling people TO companies.  This is the only way they make money.  People talk about privacy concerns in Social Media but in reality its a balance of how much can they get people to give away.

In other words the goal of Google+, Facebook etc are to make people willingly become products they can sell.  When you opt-in to marketing or 'like' something on facebook your are making that decision and that commitment.

Its 2011 and Soylent Green is the bigger product buzz on the market, its just that as with every relaunch after a faux-pas its been rebranded and renamed (to 'Social Media') but the goal is the same, to provide people, and companies, with people as a product.  This desire to monetise people is only going to get more direct and more visible, it builds on the customer marketing databases of the past but adds a more direct engagement, instead of selling a contact point you really are selling the actual individual. 

The question isn't 'is this right or wrong', its just reality.  The product of social media is the people who use it.  Social media companies aren't a charity, they want to make money, and in order to make money they either have to charge users or sell those users.

Facebook is PEOPLE!

Thanks to Rick Mans for the idea