Trusting Social Media

Social media expert and Apple's former evangelist Guy Kawasaki's Facebook talk exposes several loopholes in Facebook's rumored EdgeRank strategy. Kawasaki warns that this lack of transparency on the part of Facebook could lead to a decline in user participation and, as a result, a lack of paid brand promotions.

EdgeRank is essentially the mathematical algorithm that Facebook uses to figure out what user content shows up to which friends. As Kawasaki points out, many Facebook users aren't aware that EdgeRank even exists and that all of their current Facebook friends aren't actually seeing their posts, statuses and pictures. This could easily lead users to look elsewhere to share their lives -- since they know a large portion of their Facebook followers aren't seeing these updates to begin with. "I don't know how these algorithms work," Kawasaki says, "Or if there are any algorithms like that, but I think that's really playing with fire."