Facebook, Whatsapp and the Commodification of Affective labour

This paper addresses the question of how and to what extent social media networks have facilitated the commodification of the affective labour of consumers and workers through circuits of constant consumer feedback on commercial products and business networking culture. It provides a brief political economy overview of the role of targeted-advertising, particularly mobile advertising, in Facebook's business model and how this model necessitates user growth and user surveillance. Using as a case study Facebook's acquisition of the instant messaging (IM) company WhatsApp, I investigate how the IM market has changed Facebook's merger and acquisitions strategy, while continuing its reliance on capturing intimate user data for revenue. The monterisation of user data will be examined through a political economy framework; specifically, the broader economic circumstances that drive Facebook's business model and the process by which users' information is quantified. The final section of the paper will discuss the relationship between Facebook's business model and government surveillance.