they learned to adhere to a corporate philosophy more attuned to metrics than to cultural moments. Facebook wanted metrics—milestones like 1 billion users—so it could swallow from an even bigger fire hose of data on human interactions. The data could help improve the product so people would spend more time there, creating even more data through their posts and comments. Then the data would enable Facebook to sort people into smaller audiences that advertisers would want to sell to.
