Facebook files patent to assess users’ socio-economic status

Social network Facebook has filed a patent application for a new technology to correctly assess peoples' socio-economic status and segregate them in three classes such as working class, middle and upper class. The social networking firm plans to create a system which will collect the personal information of its user base such as education, internet usage, home ownership, etc in order to know the socio-economic status of its users.

IANS reported that the patent was made public late last week and suggested that it was building an algorithm aimed to improve Facebook's targeting capabilities in order to help it serve more relevant advertisements to the users.

According to the patent application, by predicting the socio-economic status of users and grouping them together, the company will be able to help the third-party present sponsored content to their target users instead of presenting them to all the users.

According to the patent, the classification helps third parties to more effectively promote their products and services and that Facebook can make the network more engaging for the its users.

Facebook will start questioning users about their age and then pitch questions related to the age group to which they belong. The patent application showed users between of 20 to 30 years being questioned as to the number of internet devices they own.

Further, users of 30 to 40 years of age are asked if they own a house or not. But it is not known whether the patent will actually be used for targeting the users or some other purpose.

The filing accepts that users many not feel comfortable about sharing certain information like their annual income with the social network which could adversely affect the accuracy of its socioeconomic classification.

The technology itself is described as aimed to serve Facebook's advertisers need for digital tools for better targeting their intended demographics than what they currently have.