Facebook Hate
All this Facebook hate is misguided. The reality is that Facebook users and Facebook are in a bi-lateral agreement after terms are accepted. Then Facebook provides the ability to let users show what they want in the application. In some cases they don’t give the user choice such as this new feature of revealing what you buy to your friends when you make purchases in certain way. If you are a user of Facebook and you no longer like ‘the terms’ then you can leave. Vote with your wallet, I do! Many bloggers have suggested a commercially naive idea. They are suggesting both the user and Facebook have terms. This sounds like a complicated version of permissioning to me. Businesses (web based and otherwise) simply can’t do custom bi-lateral agreements for millions of users in a low value product (actually free in this case).
I’m Leaving Facebook
I confess I’m switching off Facebook after giving it a try for a few weeks. My decision has nothing to do with their plans to reveal peoples buying habits. I do believe that feature should be permissioned though. You can’t really leave Facebook. They don’t make that very clear on entry in my opinion. You can only “Deactivate” your account. There may be a harder legal angles to get your data removed but I don’t have the time or will power to be bothered. I’m sure we will read about it in the press some day. “Using the Australian Privacy laws blah blah blah….” I tried Facebook for a couple of weeks but quickly realised it drained time and other than giving me an update on what people are up to in life via their News Feed page I don’t see the massive advantages. It isn’t helping with the goals of happiness, survival and a meaningful life. Facebook is weak in the areas of images, email and wall/chat features. Facebook is strong on data aggregation and creating value out of ‘degrees of separation’. Lots of peoples activites, uploads, updates and the like are all aggregated into the News Feed page. It’s a ticker tape of human activity. Key appeal points:
- look at what people are up to from a distance
- generate content from degrees of separation
- create an ability to promote events and causes
So just use it as a social tool if you have the spare time in my opinion.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
The core issue at play, as I see it, is that Facebook could have easily made this an “opt-in” feature, and they didn’t. With their existing features their invite/opt-in based. This isn’t.
And it’s that implied “promise” that is at stake here. Facebook has terms and conditions, but the implied promise to date is “we’ll let you opt-in”. There are subtle differences in approach with Beacon that break this.
And, although I honestly haven’t seen the commentary you refer to in terms of user’s rights, I think this is the core of the argument. When creating a big community site like this, there is a power-play at work. And when enough users revolt, it can have pretty intense results - witness the recent overtaking of Digg by it’s members over censorship.
Although legally Facebook’s T&Cs are sound and give them the permission they need to do what they’re doing, that’s not the dynamic or expectation of their community. And with that trust broken, Facebook has a real dilemma.
If they don’t re-structure Beacon to be truly opt-in, they risk a serious backlash that could really stunt their growth (I’m not suggesting they will collapse or anything as dramatic as that, just that the space becomes much less appealing to new and existing users, and they start looking elsewhere).
Yet if they change their approach, they risk alienating their advertisers at worst, or at best, reducing the value proposition of what is (honestly) a really interesting and innovative approach to marketing/advertising in the social media space. Which, of course, damages their ability to monetize the massive community they’ve built.
I’ve just finished reading an article in Fast Company, and the founders are innately aware that their user base is the only true asset they’ve got - so I think they’ll ultimately change their current practice to be more truly opt-in, or at least tweak the feature to resolve some of the more serious issues.
But it will be interesting to see how they approach it and how it resolves…
December 4th, 2007 at 10:21 am
The plot thickens: Facebook still provides your details after you’ve logged out. So if you leave Facebook, make sure you kill your cookies too…
December 4th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
thanks, i do that quite regularly. it’s like sweeping the front porch
December 5th, 2007 at 10:21 am
The inevitable about face.