Facebook wants really wants to make as much information as possible on Facebook public. It recently changed the privacy controls on the site to make it easier to share with everyone. It wants to know how much users are willing to share and, depending on the answer, it may keep pushing in this direction.
A survey sent out a couple days ago to users asks them to describe how open they are to sharing information on Facebook. The options are:
- Very open—I wouldn’t mind if everyone could see all the information I share on Facebook
- In between—I don’t mind if everyone can see some of my information, but certain information I only want to share with my close friends or family
- Private—I only share things with people I know.
The correct answer is B. Facebook wants it to be A, though. The more information that is public, the more it can turn up other people’s feed items in search results and take on Twitter in general as the de facto source of the real-time stream. In fact, Twitter has been worrying about this very move since at least last February. In the confidential Twitter papers we published last week, the February notes for a strategy meeting included a section titled “How Could Facebook Kill Us?” The top threat was “Real-Time Search.” The second threat on that list: “Opt-in to make status public.”
“Facebook wants really wants”
that doesn’t sound too good..
This privacy thing will load fb servers, unlike open twitter. They have to check each status for privacy..
I mind and I don’t like to share even a photo with people I don’t know them ..
Private 0.o
My answer is: VERY OPEN
I use Facebook and other social networks for misinformation only.
very funny, Stephen Colbert!
Connecting to TechCrunch with a private Facebook account. The irony is lost on me…
The type of personal data I have on Facebook is far more personal than on Twitter or Friendfeed. This really does concern me… I only want my “friends” on Facebook to see my info. Facebook needs to stop trying to be Twitter, and just be the best Facebook they can be, ug.
Well said.
+1
real-time search is too big an opportunity to pass up for FB. we’re talking google dollars here. just being the “best FB they can be” isn’t going to cut it.
Sash, FB don’t seem to know what they are doing, it reminds me of MS pumping huge money and effort to their online division… for the same reasons you mentioned….
I think the hype for FB is over and the new comer twitter has taken that away; surely another will come along and take the hype from twitter, so then FB will have to fight the new comer as well?!
Just be who you are and focus on your strong points to come up with the coolest innovations and become the next new shiny thing…
Righ on Sean! Trying to be all things to all people ultimately destroys companies. The trade off for getting more of my personal content, is to guarantee it stays that way. This continual “shifting” Facebook has been pulling is quite annoying. I’m wondering that even if users catch the changes, it might be too late as personal content has already been crawled and copied elsewhere.
Good point. +1
I use my Twitter account for public things while I use my Facebook account for more private things.
If Facebook were to allow me to make my profile completely public, I might not have a point to use it, because it would be the same as Twitter. And I like Twitter more for public updates.
It would probably be a bad move. Facebook has been focusing to much of their energy trying to compete directly with Twitter when they could be using their time to be innovative and make new things.
Or the things they have actually work.
Do NOT share information with Facebook that you wouldn’t want anonymously mined by third-party companies. In general, if you want to share information with friends and family, DON’T do it on the internet with a for-profit company.
Superbly said. I sure hope the people over at Facebook see your comment.
My answer is PRIVATE.
In my case and that of many Iranians, this is a matter of personal security to have anything less than absolute control of our facebook privacy. An otherwise casual trip to Iran will get you in prison for taunting the supreme leader or his puppet.
Facebook, don’t fuck this up!
ahh those people at facebook are really stupid. I ‘ve told them what to do. people don’t want to confuse their private accounts with their public ones. They should allow you to use a public page (those pages that you can become a fan of) when logging in to external sites. that’s the best twitter killer i can think of.
nobody wants their private information about family, schools and embarrassing parties to be displayed publicly. it’s not only nonsensical, it’s dangerous.
EXACTLY! This is what MySpace has done with their Profiles 2.0. You can have a public facing side, that contains a couple of pics and maybe a paragraph of “about me” info visible to the public, but only allow your accepted friends access to all your comments (”wall posts” in FB parlance), blog entries, photo galleries, etc.
whoa, i didn’t expect myspace to be ahead of this
You can do this with Facebook too. Just adjust the privacy settings.
with people I know
I don’t give all my info, just enough for my friends.
Nat
http://www.loopcity.net/
A big reason Facebook beat MySpace is that the whole world cannot view your profile (and status updates). I don’t see many Facebook users going for public information.
That said, even if only 1% of Facebook users want their status updates public, with its huge user base, this might be enough for the information to be useful.
Prvacy is important its what makes Facebook. People do share alot of personal family photos etc, I think this can hurt them to retain an audience.
“FYI: Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission. Click on “Settings” up at the top where you see the “Logout” link. Select “Privacy”. Then select “News Feed and Wall”. Next, select the tab that reads “Facebook Ads”. In the drop down box, select “No One”. Then save your changes. Do it now. Help your friends…cut and paste this into your status.”
Do I think this is a bad move? Sure. Facebook’s value is derived from its massive user base that is highly engaged, and alienating that base is dangerous. But if you use the internet you need to be aware that your privacy “rights” are minimal, so long as sites are clear in their T.O.S.
The example above — which is a status meme at the moment — is just flat out wrong. Facebook isn’t doing anything without your permission. You give Facebook your permission when you sign up. If you don’t like it, de-activate your account. But be clear: the information you put on Facebook (or any other site for that matter) is Their’s. Not yours.
I never got that survey, and hell yes I mind. My facebook is for friends and family ONLY. FaceBook needs to give it up, because it’s gone way past annoying and shot straight to infuriating.
I used to benefit by going to facebook, it was like a private party with me and my friends, and a few cool people i didn’t know yet. Now it just feels trashy (like myspace) with a bunch of douchebags all over the place scheming to make money off us. I believe they have the right to make a few bucks somehow for providing a service, but only an insignificant ammount, since we provide 100% of the valuable content.
Facebook is using classic “bait and switch”.
FB started out criticizing MYspace for being so public and “unsafe”. Facebook was supposedly a walled garden( I say fortress) that only your “real” friends knew about.
Even then I always felt Facebooks “privacy” was a joke, as it informed my friends of every little wall comment or photo comment I made.
On MYspace I had the option of making my whole profile public or private, or restricting only friends to certain content like photos and blogs. This I felt was a good balance.
Sure, on MYspace if I commented on someone’s profile, blog or photos, and their account was public, others could see my comment. HOWEVER, one would have to engage in an aggressive stalking campaign by monitoring all of my friends profiles. To me this is acceptable, because the cost in time to do so would limit such activities to government agencies or the truly obsessed.
Overtime things changed, now Facebook has completely lost its pretense of privacy in a quixotic quest to jump on the latest fad…
“Twitter Envy” is what this is. Like a has-been teen pop star, Facebook is sad because they aren’t getting hyped so much anymore in the tabloids…uhm…I mean tech blogs. LOL.
The end result will be…
SERIOUS DAMAGE TO THE FACEBOOK BRAND
Suddenly, people who were lulled into a false sense of “privacy” will have all their embarrassing photos, status updates, quiz results, etc. published to the world.
Goodbye Failbook.
This is the essence of the problem of “free” services. Sooner or later, it ends up in the public domain.
For me, Facebook is personal and I only add friends that I care about. Twitter is more impersonal and it is for networking and weak ties. When I meet someone new, a coworker for example, I don’t add them on Facebook, instead I add them on LinkedIn or Twitter. That’s why my answer to the survey would be C, “Private – I only share things with people I know.” Sorry, Facebook!
I never got the option to segment which statuses go to which friends/friend groups.
Has that gone live for the rest of you?
The type of information I have on Facebook is far more personal than on Twitter. I only want my friends on Facebook to have access to all that information. I vote for option C – “private”.
I’d love to make mine fully public but your not allowed to until your 18!
It makes me so mad. I can’t have a public profile either. This is one of the reasons I don’t really use Faceook anymore. I use Twitter and then I import my status.
They should really work something out here.
Few people realize how dangerous the archiving of all that information that can be data mined can be to their lives. I’ve written many posts about privacy and data mine – even have a category on my blog just for them.
Few realize that they may be putting their ability to find employment, get insurance, or obtain health care at risk. See my posts for details.
If they were really courageous (or desperate for a revenue model), they could roll this into a freemium model, whereby:
A) All free users of FB release the rights to their status, photos, etc. to the real-time stream, or
B) Users pay tiered monthly charges for increasing levels of privacy
Then everyone would just leave.
I, like a lot of people, use FB for private exchange and Twitter for public. As long as I continue to have the default option to keep this way of using FB, then I don’t mind if they provide other options to widely distribute my data – I just won’t use those options. If the defaults change to be open rather than private, then FB will have committed a gross error – its my data and I should choose what happens to it.
I really think that facebook is going to have a problem with moving up to A. It is going to have to do some serious pushing to get what they want done without losing people in the process.
The question I have is who on Facebook is getting this survey? I sure didn’t, and not one of my friends who I talked to have, all of whom like to have some privacy on the site.
I sure hope they aren’t selectively sending this out to users with more public friendly settings already in place just to load their data saying it’s what the users wanted…
The correct answer is C, not B.
Different people use Facebook for various reasons. Some for business and others for personal or a mix of the two. All users of Social Media need to understand a simple fact. You are sharing a space on the internet with others who may have different uses for the same service you are using than you. As such, we should all be supportive of Facebook allowing its users granular control over what they share and with whom. This, ‘I use it for this, and so this is how it should be for all…’ does not serve the service well.
For those who use Facebook for business, getting your profile crawled and having it available to anyone on the internet whether they have a Facebook account or not is certainly beneficial. Still I appreciate that there are those who like the ‘walled garden’ approach and as long as Facebook can satisfy both factions, all is right in the world.
As far as I can see, only teenagers and freshmen college kids wouldn’t mind the loss of privacy. Many of the people I know on Facebook are in the 24+ age range. These are people with wives and kids. They would definitely mind their personal data being public.
Facebook is leaning in the wrong direction, IMO. When I make a Twitter account, I make it with the mindset that I will be sharing things publicly on it. When I make a FB account, I make it with the intention of sharing things with friends, and keeping a tab on them.
Facebook is a company looking for ways to create revenue from the information it has shown it already feels is its own property. I don’t think mass indignation will prevent them from figuring out a way to use that information. Just delay it. They’ll keep working on slowly chipping away resistance until they get to do what they want.
I can’t say I blame them. The one asset they have that has any real value is all the information their members voluntarily upload on a daily basis. It makes sense from a business standpoint to figure out a way to exchange on that information for revenue.
What Facebook should do is set up a royalty system where they acknowledge that users do indeed own their information (like songwriters own their own songs) and pay each user a fee each time Facebook profits from the use of that user’s information.
I’ve noticed. It seems some people aren’t aware that their walls are visible to everyone which means pretty much everything they post on their profile is visible to everyone.
I get a feeling it wasn’t really a “big oops” on Facebook’s part. They claim to have good privacy controls in place but they really don’t. And is it really a big coincidence that every time Facebook unveils new privacy settings that everyone’s privacy ends up getting violated because the new settings are set very leniently to the point where everyone can see anything you post? Probably not. And there seem to be a lot of “bugs” in the system that I’m starting to get the feeling really aren’t bugs. Like the wall post bug where as long as people have access to your wall they can see anything you post even if you’ve restricted them from seeing that information (i.e. status updates).
“Oops! How did that happen?! We have no idea!”
The stricter privacy controls are what gives Facebook an advantage over other social networking sites so by making everything open they’re just destroying themselves (and probably everyone else who has an account) in the process.
Let’s face it, facebook does not care what early tech adopters think anymore (i.e. most us readers of TC). They are now focused on milking their mass market of users that don’t even think twice about the data they share online. Those users are less likely to go to the settings section and change anything so they will just use the default settings. Can you blame them? That’s what’s going to bring the big ad dollars for #fb.
-Robb
FB has no choice…Twitter’s main problem right now is lack of engagement. if they add photo and video tabs these could start the process of unseating FB.
The wall concept as implemented by FB is dated…Twitter got that part right
If Does equis man has anything to say about it, perhaps the sheep on facebook should read a book by the name of 1984.
We all know exactly why they want to persuade everyone to allow for your information to be public to the world.
Imagine a world of no more privacy.
Where your every move online is monitored and recorded in a database, and everything about you is numbered. Where someone many states away or perhaps in another country has a record of everything you have ever bought, of everything you have ever owned, of every item of clothing in your closet. .
This is huge power for them to create advertisement and marketing models that fits every individual to exactly what their number code says about them. Where they like to go and shop and so on. So they can strategically put the ads in your face in an intelligent way.
This is where the world of big online corporations. The internet is like a huge fingerprint of your every move. The more the world turns to dedicating most of their life’s online the more big corporations will want to know your every move.
Welcome to the war of online privacy!
yep i think you got it right. The more information you share with the facebook system the more information facebook has in targeting ads to you.
Where’s the Internet Nazi privacy police?
they’re all busy on wikipedia
Why doesn’t facebook just leave the personal conversation and pictures alone? It just seems so stupid. What is that information worth anyway?
How many personal conversations do you have to snoop to find out what kind of BMW someone wants to buy?
Just ask them. Or better yet give them a place to talk about BMWs. Nobody considers that personal information anyway.
Wonder what their real motive was with the survey.
Gmail targets ads based on your conversation. Why isn’t there a fuss about that
I think it’s more about the fact that our friends and family are on FB, and if our personal information is in the wrong hands, everything that is important to us could be compromised.
Welcome to the online war.
this is not bad for people that are on facebook for career networking purposes! Hey, why not? if you don’t like it you can adjust your privacy settings
I’m a mix… There’s some stuff that I’ll share, and other stuff I won’t. I don’t mind if everyone sees my status updates, for example, because it’s updated from my tweets, which are public anyway.
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Its all about privacy and its not actually bad. This is about facebook. Thanks for update