As additional evidence that you are right, open facebook and look at the ads they are displaying, they are way, way, way off. (currently I am seeing a thermacare ad, I'm not sick, and a car insurance ad, I don't own a car.
Amazon on the other hand pretty much got me to buy a Romba by continuously posting photos of it on all kinds of websites until I just couldn't stand sweeping anymore.
Sorry. Just a little neurotic. Carry on.
> I also do not stay logged in to facebook so the link tracking is also
> nearly useless.
http://www.nikcub.com/posts/facebook-fixes-logout-issue-expl...
> They want to retain the ability to track browsers after
> logout for safety and spam purposes, and they want to
> be able to log page requests for performance reasons etc.User accounts that are deleted have all associated user created content and data hard deleted after account is deleted. Additionally, a user deletes content (status updates, comments, etc..) that data is hard deleted.
Important distinction - it knows as much about you as you and your network tell it.
While I very much applaud your interest in data analysis, this is very much an overreach. Even assuming that facebook has as much information about you as you think, there has been no service which is better at predicting what you like than you yourself. Furthermore, I have yet to come across a music discovery service which can predict music that I like when I specifically give it songs that I like.
Furthermore, I would like to point out that facebook only knows as much about you as you tell it. I dont use foursqare, checkins, status updates, instagram, photo uploads, etc; not because of some ideology for privacy, but rather because I simply dont find them useful. I know that I am not the only one like that. Facebook has relatively little information about me. I also do not stay logged in to facebook so the link tracking is also nearly useless.