Below are excerpts from the discussion on Pinyadda around this All Facebook article, “Time Magazine Puts Facebook Privacy Front and Center”. On Pinyadda you can follow breaking news from thousands of sites & blogs across the web on topics like: Facebook, Social Media, Privacy.

Click to read the full discussion on Pinyadda.

Tom N. pinned this.

“What people want isn’t complete privacy. It isn’t that they want secrecy. It’s that they want control over what they share and what they don’t.” Zuckerberg has a point.

Chase G. pinned this to Austin G-S., Cheryl M., Teddy S., Chris E., Georgie S., Joe R., Kevin M., Katie G., Lauren F., Kristin M., Bill M., Rob G., Tom N..

I agree somewhat with Zuck that not everyone wants complete privacy, but people certainly want the option. What Facebook is trying to do is change user behavior which is a hard thing to do, and I am not sold on whether it is good business.

Once a company has defined itself and its strength, in Facebook’s case they are clearly the best in the world at connecting people around their social lives, it is hard to change users’ core behavior. Facebook started as a private network which is a large part of the draw, and many people on Facebook naturally want to keep much of their data private due to the nature of the content that is hosted.

Where the give and take comes in is taking a look at Twitter’s more open system, where users typically engage with larger networks and brands. FB clearly sees value in this sort of behavior which is why they are trying to push people to be more “open and connected”, however what people don’t seem to be talking about is the limited engagement that happens on Twitter. Not everyone wants complete privacy, but a majority of people still don’t feel comfortable/see the need to engage on Twitter, and I personally believe part of it has to do with the public nature of the site.

So, what does everybody think, if you were FB and had two choices – 1. Make the platform more open with more public info but lose some of the deep engagement they currently host or 2. Keep people’s networks more restricted and focus on the deeper engagement – which would you go with. It certainly isn’t this black and white in reality, but figured it could be an interesting theoretical.

Lauren F. pinned this to Chase G., Cheryl M.,Chris E., Katie G., Tom N..

Monetizing the site is dramatically impacting user experience, and the focus is less on the user but more on how Facebook can live up to their valuation. Therefore, whether it is your 1 or 2, it is all about unlocking how they can make money with advertising or brands. Either open or restricted, it will be interesting to see how they execute to make some $, hopefully not at the expense of their incredibly large user base (which has yet to really unite and riot over an issue)

Katie G. pinned this to Lauren F., Tom N..

I pinned Tom because he told me last week, after I set my privacy settings to be as exclusive as FB would allow me, that I’m too concerned with Big Brother coming after me (and began calling me Orwell). But I think he’s beginning to change his mind…Tom, your thoughts?

Rob G. pinned this.

I think you need (2) to ultimately succeed.

e.g. there are things you’d like to be able to share with your friends on the internet somehow that you don’t want prospective employers to see (crazy drinking, that night in AC, etc). If FB doesn’t provide the Friend sandbox at least then users will ultimately go to other, more controlled and more silo’ed places.

The Twitter comparison is a great one, except that adults are very conscious of what they tweet

Joe R. pinned this to Chase G., Cheryl M., Chris E., Katie G., Lauren F., Tom N..

Mark Zuckerberg is doing his best to come across as a visionary, with statements like “public is the new default” and “the age of privacy is over,” but he’s really just an opportunist, bending and shifting his vision to fit his changing business model. Facebook’s core appeal was that it was private.

It’s pretty well known that they are working on an email product to complete with Gmail. Given this latest flap, how many of you would trust Facebook with your email?

Tom N. pinned this to Chase G., Cheryl M., Joe R., Katie G., Lauren F..

The thing that gets me the most is this idea that a social media site should be completely shielded. In effect, doesn’t that go against the purpose of having this service? Users need to be smart/savvy enough to keep intimate things off the web. If you don’t want people to know about private/embarrassing/anything about you or that you’ve done or said, keep them off the web. Facebook (and other similar sites) is for SHARING information about you, not holding your life story.

As for the email aspect, I like Facebook and think it is a fun thing, but it was developed in a certain mindset. Twitter, FB, etc. were developed to share information in the open. Blending the open sharing of info and the privacy of email is not a good idea. These communication methods are polar opposites in the level of transparency and the combination of these ideas (and their developers) could have disastrous consequences.

Austin G-S. pinned this.

I’m pretty convinced that Facebook will go as far toward the public end of the spectrum as possible, and I don’t think that they will truly face any real uprising from their users. There will not, at least in the foreseeable future, be any kind of ‘Facebook Revolt.’ Why?
For a couple reasons:

1) It’s almost impossible to delete your account, and probably completely impossible to remove your data from the site. So what’s the point?
2) All your stuff is there. And your contacts. And a whole bunch of ‘your’ photos that, in reality, mostly belong to other people (at least in my case). No matter how much I claim to ‘hate’ Facebook, I’m not willing to give that up.
3) The platform still works. And for its scale, it works really well.

Privacy is important to me, but at the same time I’d rather have my stuff public than not have it at all. And kudos to Tom for pointing out the crucial fact that we all put data into Facebook of our own free will. The privacy policy is there to be read. So in some sense we’re reaping what we’ve sewn.

Joe R. pinned this

I agree. People are apathetic, so I doubt there will be a revolt.

And I don’t think we just want to keep the beer-bong photos private. (I’m so glad I finished college before the Internet, by the way.)

It’s also photos of my kids. If I share those with my friends and family, that’s great. I really appreciate a service that makes that easy, but then when I go in one day and discover those photos are not public on Google because Facebook changed their privacy policy, then I become more guarded. I don’t share photos of my kids any more on Facebook. It’s a matter of trust. Once you lose your customers’ trust, you can’t get it back.

And people don’t revolt. They move on. How many of you “deleted” your MySpace page? And how many of you just stopped using it. How about AOL?

Lauren F. pinned this

Thinking more of a media assault then losing facebook users, but completely agreed people aren’t going to cancel their accounts in mass numbers. Not just for your 3 reasons which are all valid, but because people simply like to creep on their “friends” lives.

Tom, I totally agree with you–wait until our friends run for office. NOW that is a generational case study in the making.

Cheryl Morris pinned this.

What an incredible conversation to see unfold. What interests me the most about Facebook’s shift is how huge the network is — and how we’re really the minority in analyzing why and how it’s going to effect the company and users going forward. My friends from home haven’t really been buzzing about the changes, and definitely aren’t thinking about the info they post as something that FB then moves to monetize. SO, the user behavior changes and effects are just really hard for me to feel comfortable predicting, and why I tend to focus on my own use/reactions.

I do absolutely agree to a T with Lauren that their recent changes (newsfeed overhaul, and now the move to public) is affecting the UX. My use of and interaction on FB has really changed in 2010 when I think about it.

It’s true that being on FB means you want to share SOME things, or you wouldn’t be on there from the beginning. But the underlying reason is TRUST — you want to share those things with people you know and trust. At the end of the day, I do not want weird dudes looking at photos of me, and have taken down hundreds because of that as my “friends” have doubled on FB over the last 18 months (aka they are not very close friends any more). That means less is being shared, and less interactions are occurring around that content. I have taken more of my interests down, too, removed myself from groups and stopped “liking” as many things. That is some of the “deep” engagement they are losing — and that has implications for advertisers. I do not want to make my page (wow.. typing this after I read what I wrote and realized I did not type profile…) completely public. If completely public is the direction Facebook is ultimately trying to go in — which it probably is, as the global web identity — I’m going to share less and less about myself.

And I really believe in social networks in the old school sense of it being a place where you have conversations with friends. As much as I love seeing Pinyadda in my newsfeed and a select few other companies, I don’t want brands who hire consultants who read reports that say “posting X times a day on your page results in the best engagement” mixed with — and definitely not overtaking — the conversations I’m having with friends.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Top Yadda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.