Zuckerberg, that crazy Ex who reads your texts.

Quick! Everyone freak out because someone finally read what app permissions Facebook wants from you now. As you might of read in your newsfeed the latest Android update now needs permission to read all of your text messages.

As an entrepreneur and general fan of the interwebs, I tend to view these types of moves thru a little bit different of a lense then the people Zuck has helped me stay connected with since I randomly knew them in that one class in college.

I try to look at the strategy as to why companies and more importantly people do things.

Everyone’s freaking out that Facebook wants to read your texts now. How are you surprised by this?

At least they are being upfront (I’m looking at you NSA.)

Of course they want this data and its not why you think. Zuckerberg is trying to provide more context to your life. Who you talk to and what you talk about. He’s recently said Facebook isn’t cool anymore. And he’s right. It’s a utility.

Sure it’s a bit creepy that there’s this profile out there that knows all of my interest, social connections both online and offline, where I go, what I buy, etc. But it’s just data to him.

If analyzing the data of my life can make it better, analyze a way. I’d definitely click on an ad that used social context about something happening “off-line” via a random text. It would improve Facebook for me and become an increased utility. For example, an ad suggesting a concert because you and your friend were talking about going out that evening.

Seems useful to me. But I digress.

It’s not just about ads.

Facebooks mission has always been to connect the world and they've done a pretty good job. However now they've created an interesting problem. They haven’t connected just people, they’ve connected brands to people. Turns out, people like to be connected to brands or news, etc and all of those connections create a ton of posts. But with all of that noise what do you serve in the news feed? How do you provide a good user experience to your user and keep them coming back?

By knowing your connections to people and who you talk to regularly offline vs. offline Facebook is able to provide a more contextual Newsfeed to your daily life. In a day when new apps come and go Facebook is making a play to be the utility that provides context to your relationships. This means more status updates and posts from people you actually talk to, places you actually buy from and in the end less cat memes.

So I guess what I’m getting at is if this prevents Cat memes in my newsfeed you can be like my ex-girlfriend and read all my texts Mark.