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.
