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Facebook Hired a Full-Time Pollster To Monitor Zuckerberg's Approval Ratings (theverge.com)
According to The Verge, Facebook hired a full-time pollster to track Mark Zuckerberg's approval ratings last year as the young CEO was making his 50-state tour across the country. The pollster, Tavis McGinn, reportedly "decided to leave the company after only six months after coming to believe that Facebook had a negative effect on the world." From the report: It was April, and Facebook was caught up in the fallout of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. After initially discounting the possibility that fake news had contributed to Donald Trump's victory, Facebook acknowledged that Russia-linked groups had spent more than $100,000 on political advertising. Zuckerberg undertook a nationwide listening tour modeled after a modern political campaign. McGinn would fill another role common to political campaigns: leading an ongoing poll operation dedicated to tracking minute changes in Zuckerberg's public perception. "It was a very unusual role," McGinn says. "It was my job to do surveys and focus groups globally to understand why people like Mark Zuckerberg, whether they think they can trust him, and whether they've even heard of him. That's especially important outside of the United States."
McGinn tracked a wide range of questions related to Zuckerberg's public perception. "Not just him in the abstract, but do people like Mark's speeches? Do they like his interviews with the press? Do people like his posts on Facebook? It's a bit like a political campaign, in the sense that you're constantly measuring how every piece of communication lands. If Mark's doing a barbecue in his backyard and he hops on Facebook Live, how do people respond to that?" Facebook worked to develop an understanding of Zuckerberg's perception that went beyond simple "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" metrics, McGinn says. "If Mark gives a speech and he's talking about immigration and universal health care and access to equal education, it's looking at all the different topics that Mark mentions and seeing what resonates with different audiences in the United States," he says. "It's very advanced research."
McGinn tracked a wide range of questions related to Zuckerberg's public perception. "Not just him in the abstract, but do people like Mark's speeches? Do they like his interviews with the press? Do people like his posts on Facebook? It's a bit like a political campaign, in the sense that you're constantly measuring how every piece of communication lands. If Mark's doing a barbecue in his backyard and he hops on Facebook Live, how do people respond to that?" Facebook worked to develop an understanding of Zuckerberg's perception that went beyond simple "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" metrics, McGinn says. "If Mark gives a speech and he's talking about immigration and universal health care and access to equal education, it's looking at all the different topics that Mark mentions and seeing what resonates with different audiences in the United States," he says. "It's very advanced research."
Facebook Hired a Full-Time Pollster To Monitor Zuckerberg's Approval Ratings
Jesus, people, who the fuck cares?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Mark Zuckerberg is a sociopathic, evil person, and his life's work is a stain upon humanity.
Because the Zuk has access to a billion eyeballs, is an SJW, and has political aspirations.
I've been listening a bit lately to Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychology professor.
He thinks SJW's and their identity politics are really similar to the marxist ideology that caused so much suffering in Russia.
Thus I think we need to be playing close attention to people like the Zuk.
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Thank god even FB people are coming to their senses.
Zuckerberg for president! He would be so much better than the thin skinned narcissist we have now ... oh, wait.
In other narcissist news, I am planning a massive military parade in my own honor. OK, it's not exactly massive. It's just me and the dog, but we will be wearing our dress uniforms and I will be carrying a boom box blasting the Königgrätzer Marsch. It commences as soon as I finish this highball.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't know if he's planning on a run for President, but the pollster (and all the other campaigning stuff) would still be a good idea from a business sense.
Of the big three (Apple, Google, Facebook) Facebook is both the most vulnerable and the most closely identified with its CEO. Facebook's biggest asset is the "everyone is on it" network effect, but it's a lot easier to find someone online than it was 5 years ago, and it's a lot easier for someone to find a new social network than it is to build a new Google or iPhone.
If Zuckerberg becomes genuinely unpopular the company could be in major trouble very quickly.
I stole this Sig
Look at the last 15 articles on the front page. These guys are pimping every article coming out of the verge, guardian, vice, recode and nbc. Only a couple of them have an actual submitter, and in each case it's "an anonymous reader". There are of course 10+ websites to choose from covering every one of these topics.
Enough with the leftist tech site circlejerk.
and he has staggering political power and wealth. So yeah, we should care. He's in a position to exert enormous influence on your life and mine. And very likely not for the better.
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I think Mark's behavior is the natural outcome of someone who has attained such a level of wealth that one has exhausted all possible things a person could buy to attain them happiness. If you can look at his situation then from that perspective it is natural to ask, what then is next for such a person to do? They have bought (or can buy) any material possession they desire but what they can't buy (at least to an appreciable extent) is for someone to 'love' them. Once you've reached the point where your money or influence has hit a brick wall you're going to look for ways to surpass that wall, hence the polster cited in this article who was hired to track Zuck like he was a politician.
Yeah, I'm arm chair psychologizin' for sure (that's not a word) but I think common sense can tell you this is what is going on (and history I believe definitely concurs with this point of view as Zuck is one of only a long line of folks in the annals of human history who have it that level where practically infinite wealth reaches it's limits insofar as getting your fellow human to 'like'(tm) you. A parallel example although running on a slightly different track is that of Elon Musk. He's a billionaire who again, having run out of things to 'buy', is steadily seeking to find ways to use his wealth and position to immortalize himself in other ways such as getting his brand and influence onto other worlds, etc (he's sending his own Tesla car into outer space, for example).
TLDR: You don't have to be a billionaire or even close to understand their motivations. Despite what they would have you believe, they are only human, and are still governed by the same crap that the rest of us peons or governed by (the pursuit of money, idolatry, etc). They just have the money and power to pursue it as their life pursuit.
A guy who made his billions tracking what people like and don't like had to hire a polster to tell him if people like him. But not just like him, more specifically whether they like his facebook posts.
Just plain wow. And also: who the hell actually uses facebook?
Let's face it: Zuck is creepy. He smiles all the time. No one smiles as much as he does; it's clearly fake. This a guy who became one of the richest people on Earth harvesting data on your cat posts and eating habits.
And if people actually gave a shit about that nearly as much as you wish they would, Facebook would have gone the way of MySpace by now. People don't give a shit about privacy, so let's stop pretending they do.
And Obama proved that fake smiles is an asset.
If Zuckerberg wants that much information in that much detail, then I assume he's at least contemplating running for office. Given his fortune, his profile, and the phenomenon of having Trump as president, then I also assume that the Zuck has his eye on the Presidency.
We've had celebrities in politics before - Reagan, Franken, Schwarzenegger, et al - but Trump really broke the mold by aiming for, and landing, the highest office in the land without having held any lower office. Recently there were rumors that Oprah might make a grab for that particular brass ring. She said she had no plans to do so, but the idea of having Presidents with no prior political experience seems to be in the air now. Even though Zuckerberg isn't quite a celebrity in the usual sense, he has a pretty high profile. So I'm left wondering if he might try to make a beeline for the Oval Office.
I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, I think it's exciting that the political same-old-same-old, the glad-handing and back-scratching and favour trading and partisanship and all that goes along with them, might be challenged and forced to change at least a little bit for the better. On the other hand, the only people who can afford to even attempt a short circuiting of the normal political process are, like Zuckerberg, so rich and successful, and so out of touch with everyday reality, that they might be worse than the back-biting politicians who clawed their way up the ranks.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
People donâ(TM)t care about privacy because most internet privacy policies are dozens of pages long and hidden behind a very boring link. It is arguably something that needs more regulation. Banks are required to send a 1-page form explaining how and who they are sharing your data with. That form was carefully designed by the Consumers Financial Protection Bureau to be easily understandable. There was an NPR show a while back that got a bunch of (3rd? 5th?) graders and they were able to understand the form. There isnâ(TM)t any reason why the same or similar form could not be applied to all businesses that collect personal data.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.