I can certainly see the criticisms mounting, if FB go financial. But, I also recall the many times FB withstood criticism. Criticism from users over product changes. Experts on privacy. Journalists and politicians on social issues and user manipulation. They persevere, and rarely have to give an inch.
OTOH, I think FB is the world leader in gaining leverage from customer data. Their ad business is more based on targeting data than Google's. It could conceivably even survive the demise of FB itself. Finding partners to run ads is doable, and with fb's targeting that still could ad up to major and business.
So perhaps they're not great at securing customer data, though they are probably more as technically capable than most banks. But, they are the very best at leveraging and monetising customer data.
I hear you, but I'm not convinced. Retail finance is being hammered by future giants like Revolut and Stripe who are not complete noobs in leveraging customer data and start from a much better position PR-wise (relatively).
How do Revolut and Stripe leverage customer data? I suppose Stripe has some fraud detection, but I haven't heard of anything game changing. For Revolut, I can't really think of much.
FB has the most targeting-centric ad business by far. In dollar terms, I can't think of anyone earning as much from customer data as FB.
I can certainly see the criticisms mounting, if FB go financial. But, I also recall the many times FB withstood criticism. Criticism from users over product changes. Experts on privacy. Journalists and politicians on social issues and user manipulation. They persevere, and rarely have to give an inch.
OTOH, I think FB is the world leader in gaining leverage from customer data. Their ad business is more based on targeting data than Google's. It could conceivably even survive the demise of FB itself. Finding partners to run ads is doable, and with fb's targeting that still could ad up to major and business.
So perhaps they're not great at securing customer data, though they are probably more as technically capable than most banks. But, they are the very best at leveraging and monetising customer data.
Call it a high risk, high reward investment.