At times, the Euro­pean Court of Jus­ti­ce, the Minis­try of Jus­ti­ce, count­less edi­to­ri­al offices dis­cuss only one topic: the data of the self. How much more of this type of data do com­pa­nies want to coll­ect? What do they intend to do with the bil­li­ons of dos­siers? Whe­re will they be stored? To whom, if anyo­ne, are they allo­wed to pass them on, and who “owns” the­se data sets that have trans­for­med us all, wit­hout our rea­li­zing it, into trans­pa­rent indi­vi­du­als and brought us digi­tal twins? Meta has curr­ent­ly about 2.9 bil­li­on users and their data. 2.9 bil­li­on data of peo­p­le that Meta uses, coll­ects and dif­fe­ren­tia­te every day as core busi­ness. How does Meta earn money, a com­pa­ny who­se mar­ket capi­ta­liza­ti­on is $ 629,500,000,000? What does this com­pa­ny do, a com­pa­ny that does­n’t have a sin­gle manu­fac­tu­ring plant? It does­n’t pro­du­ce any­thing con­cre­te – all this com­pa­ny does is: net­wor­king. As bypro­duct the com­pa­ny ana­ly­ze the pro­files of its cus­to­mers and sells them to wealt­hy inqui­si­ti­ve pro­vi­ders. Of cour­se, the „me „s also gets some­thing in return – name­ly free ser­vices such as adver­ti­sing ban­ner, Whats­App, Insta­gram… also royal­ty-free tools and eco­sys­tems, on which Meta cus­to­mers lea­ve their data and whe­re the­se – from Meta coll­ec­ted data – are polished up to this very “I”.

What moti­va­tes the­se 2.9 bil­li­on Meta users bet­ween the ages of 13 and 100 to offer them­sel­ves as „mer­chan­di­se“ on Face­book? What moti­va­tes Meta users to sign a „set of rules of pro­ce­du­re“ com­pri­sing 30 den­se­ly writ­ten A4 pages, and thus to ent­rust various use rights to Meta? What moti­va­tes the­se peo­p­le to reve­al and give away their own iden­ti­ty? What encou­ra­ge them to publish their most inti­ma­te thoughts on this plat­form? The­re is only one ans­wer to this: they are dri­ven. Their ego is only a real one if it is reco­gni­zed as such by others and when they feel to per­tain to a com­mu­ni­ty of a lot of fri­ends. A simp­le 629,5‑billion-dollar secret. One that you can take advan­ta­ge of if we con­sider the fol­lo­wing: Only that which sup­ports, builds, under­pins, frames, rein­forces or embel­lishes this ego will be consumed.

In fact, we could have known this a long time ago. Back in the 1970s, experts at the Ame­ri­can Gal­lup pol­ling insti­tu­te found out that 96% of 500 stu­dents who were given a pen wro­te their own name with it. The first thing 447 out of 500 stu­dents did when they saw a map was to look for their home­town. So, they were doing not­hing more than under­li­ning their ego, nur­tu­ring it, and ser­ving its needs.

If you as a sup­pli­er want to sell some­thing to your group today, the path to the check­out leads through the dif­fe­ren­tia­ted ego of your micro-tar­get group. Anyo­ne who recom­mends some­thing dif­fe­rent to you is decei­ving himself.

Fol­low us on our blog “Think befo­re doing”