Facebook ‘Clear History’ Will Roll Out This Year

While great news for privacy-savvy users, the new feature will be a blow to Facebook’s business model. The company built its platform on its capacity to provide advertisers with hyper-targeted audiences. Less targeting will ultimately be translated into lower effectiveness. But according to both  Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and CFO David Wehner, the move is necessary because of the “privacy headwinds” the business faces.

But to be clear, the feature will be opt-in and only those users who deliberately choose to erase all of the third-party data associated with their account will actually do so.

Will ‘Clear History’ really impact Facebook’s ability to hyper-target users on behalf of advertisers, or will this be just another PR move? Time will tell. But the truth is that advertisers have grown over-dependent on hyper-targeting, often focusing on the “wrong metrics” as well as short term results rather than brand building.