So What, Who Cares (vol 1, issue 26) How Facebook is finding better ways to sell you

Hello from the land of the October summer, a phrase that seems both Ray Bradbury-like and deeply contradictory to everything he articulated in The October Country:

“October Country . . . that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain. . . .”

Anyway! Let's move on with October news:

Facebook is very excited about the re-launch of its advertising platform, Atlas, because this new-and-improved suite of software tracking and data crunching tools purports to solve two nagging problems advertisers have when it comes to their audience: losing specific people as they move from desktop to tablet to mobile device and being able to match offline and online activity in order to form a more complete data profile of each specific user.

That people are now approaching personal computing with the expectation that they -- and their data -- should be able to seamlessly move between different classes of computing devices is called "liquid computing." (Disclosure: That link is to a piece from a colleague at my day job.) From the user standpoint, liquid computing makes sense: Why shouldn't you be able to start composing an email on your phone and have the draft pop up in your desktop? A decade-plus of web-based apps have already trained us to expect to be able to do what we want independent of device.

Until recently, users had the advantage: Tracking cookies can't physically jump between devices, so it was impossible for sites to get the whole picture of a user might be doing when she wasn't surfing the Web. However, Facebook's Atlas platform doesn't need your cookies: It is partnering with a wide assortment of entities, from Instagram to the Weather Company, to track users across multiple devices, search engine queries, social media sites and apps.

So what? Facebook is a company that is already very good at making money off ads: For Q2 2014, 92% of Facebook's revenue came from advertising. Of that revenue, 62% came from mobile ads. I gave you percentages first so you'll understand what substantial slices of the ol' pie can be linked to ads. But to get into the real numbers: Facebook made $2.68 billion dollars from all its advertising in Q2'14. Of that $2.68 billion, $1.66 billion was made off mobile ads.

Expect those numbers to surge upward again if the ad industry equivalent of Total Information Awareness takes off like Facebook and Atlas think it will. By being able to compile exhaustive profiles on both consumers and campaign performances, Facebook will be able to continue arguing that they can charge premium rates for ads because they'll deliver data-driven results.

Who cares? The online ad industry is going through a massive transition right now, thanks to the surging engagement (i.e. activity) among social media and via mobile devices. The big questions everyone is trying to answer is are "Page views can be juked. How do we know we've got people's attention?" and "How much can we charge for success?" An ad platform that watches over a user's shoulder as they move from iPhone to iPad to desktop computer and back again basically sends the message that eyeballs don't count until you can see where they've been looking at all times.

But even if you're not particularly interested in the shakeup of the digital advertising landscape -- and why would you be, unless your livelihood depends on it? -- you might be interested with how corporations are compiling dossiers on your every move, with no transparency or accountability to you as a user and with no way of letting you know exactly how much you're worth to data marketers. People will be making money off you without your consent and without even giving you a cut of the profits.

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Two pop culture notes today:

First, the intrepid Philip Mozolak and I went nomad last week, but we'll be back with a new double-decker recap podcast of Sons of Anarchy episodes 0703 and 0704. Look for the link on my Twitter stream over the weekend.

Second, I read Leaving Megalopolis by Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore yesterday. It's wonderfully written and pants-wettingly terrifying because it is the logical answer to the "What if ...?" question "What if superpowered heroes inexplicably went evil?"

(Note: This theme was explored slightly in J. Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars, but that series keeps a few superheroes in reserve. There are none here.)

Anyway, Leaving Megalopolis is fantastic, especially if you're also the type of person who likes The Walking Dead or any comic book that examines the nature of humanity when the feces meet the fan.

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What comics have you read recently? (If any at all.) Are you now more inclined to try out Ello because it's so openly anti-tracking? Tell me via email or Twitter. Always let me know what you think about So What, Who Cares? If you really like it, tell a friend to subscribe.