Why I Won't be Visiting Intel's Museum of Me

Intel is getting a ton of buzz for its "Museum of Me" app. I've read many oohs and ahhs about it, and even that Intel is "changing advertising" with it. Sounds cool, right? I finally relented after seeing the tweet about it changing advertising and went to check it out.

The first step of the journey is connecting to Facebook. In order to satisfy my curiosity and check out the app, this is what Intel wants from me:

You know what? Call me paranoid and/or crazy but that's BS and I don't care what  mysteries lurk in the Museum of Me--I'm not doing it. Why do I have to give Intel the ability to post to my Facebook Wall and access my profile information, photos and videos, and friends' information?

I know I'm supposed to be the cheerleader for this stuff since I'm a social media manager and all...but I'm sorry, I'm just not. You want me to give you my email address in exchange for possibly winning something or being able to receive coupons? Ok, fine. But pretending to provide entertainment or amusement or whatever it is that Facebook apps claim to do in exchange for me giving a company access to every detail of my life as it lives on Facebook? Forget it. That's not advertising, that's mass stupidity on our parts for allowing it.

I think there needs to be WAY more transparency about exactly what we're exposing when we allow apps like Intel's Museum of Me and countless others access to....well, everything about us and our friends on Facebook. Why does a company spend thousands of dollars creating a virtual museum of your Facebook stuff? Just because it's cool and good PR for them? Or because they get to suck every drop of information out of us in the process then sell it or market to us or do who knows what with it? We go apeshit about privacy when the TSA wants to scan us, but we all bow to companies like Intel for creating stuff like this--then bend over and let them take us for all we're worth digitally. Frankly, the TSA can scan the crap out of me--I couldn't care less--but this continued private information pillage via Facebook? No thanks.