Message to Facebook: It's About Control
Posted by anastasia on 09-07-2006One of the most fascinating aspects of what's been happening with the popularity of blogs and social networking sites with teens has been their interpretation of what is private and what is public. Before the media frenzy surrounding MySpace began to change this, the perception was that my profile or blog (if I were a teen) is private from my parents, teachers. I think that teens get that strangers look at their profiles on MySpace, and while some of them might enjoy the potential of being super popular with the MySpace masses, most just ignore this factor and communicate with real friends. Once teens began to get busted for what they were posting, this perception slowly began to shift. At the same time, I think that teens are very aware and protective of their privacy when it comes to giving out personal information to marketers or the prospect of the government evesdropping on them.
Now with the blowup over at Facebook, (Washington Post, reg. required) we see another twist in the perception of what is private vs. what is public. I think Facebook users are different from MySpace users in that they are choosing to be a part of a closed network to begin with and don't have the desire to show off for the masses — more to stay hyperconnected to their social network of friends and classmates who they also see in person on campus. But for some reason, putting information and updates that were already in a student's Facebook profile and syndicating it via a feed, was interpretted as a complete violation of privacy. My take on this is very simple — teens, college students, ok, anyone from Gen X and Y who is used to living online, do not like features that you can't control. The fact that you can't turn the feeds off or just have that feature as an option if you choose to use it is where Facebook screwed up. The perception of privacy is really about control. If I feel like I control it, it seems more private. If I feel like the company or someone else is controlling what happens to my data, not so private.
Thoughts?
Technorati Tag: Facebook
September 7th, 2006 at 8:26 am
It's interesting to me just how universally loathed the "new facebook" has become. I talk with dozens of students on a daily basis, and for that evening, I would say the majority of conversation started with "omg, the new facebook sucks!"
I suppose I work with kids that might be a little more savvy about issues like privacy, rights, etc (being debaters), but I can't believe it is good for Facebook Inc to have such a universally negative reaction.
Literally everyone was trying to find ways to control what was being "fed."
September 7th, 2006 at 9:15 am
I’ve been on the Facebook for the last three years, and I regularly check it even though I’ve been out of school for a year and a half. I also have a MySpace but I’m always telling my friends how I think Facebook is much better.
The thing with MySpace is, unless you set your profile to say you’re 14, anyone can view your page. Facebook has options to allow everyone to view it, everyone in all your networks to view it or just people from your school.
I think the thing that separated the Facebook from MySpace was the fact joining was more controlled than MySpace. Yes, MySpace boasts over 47 million members but how many of those “members” are paid profiles by corporations, parents who joined just to monitor their kids’ pages, or role playing profiles with people pretending to be actors, tv characters, etc? In order to join Facebook you have to be a college student with an .edu email. They opened it up to high school kids last year and yes, anyone can pretend to be a high school student to join, but what’s the point in doing that unless your other friends are on there as well?
When I logged on to the Facebook when the feeds were introduced, I was a bit surprised. They crossed a line. The executives at Facebook are saying if we don’t want people to know these things about us then we should stop using it. What kind of response to loyal users who have made their company infinitely successful in the past few years? If anything, they should be telling us they’re making changes to allow us to turn the feature off or on. That is the problem I have with the new feeds, there is no way to get away from it. Yes, the technology behind the feeds is quite impressive, especially because it is being used for the first time in a social networking community. But the fact is they should let us choose whether or not we want to know about “Joe went from being in a relationship to being single” just by logging in.
They claim we have the option of being excluded from the feed but I would have to manually delete every action/update I do when I’m logged in to be excluded, there is no universal action I can do to be excluded. On top of that, I don’t care to know every move my friends are doing on the Facebook. I don’t care to know that they added Smallville to their favorite TV shows or whatever else they have to say.
Yes, social networks are made so we can keep in touch with friends. But I don’t talk to all my Facebook friends on a regular basis. It’s a way of bringing us all together but it doesn’t mean we’re BFF. I have a bunch of friends I went to high school with on my Facebook page but that was over five years ago, I know they changed and I changed a lot when I went off to college. It doesn’t really make me any closer when I read that Pat is attending a party at David’s apartment next Friday.
I’ve read that the Facebook wants us to become closer to our friends and this feed is their way of making that happen. Some of us don’t want it. Yes, I want an easy way to message an old high school buddy if I’m coming home for a holiday but I don’t need to know every detail of their new life. Facebook needs to realize they’ve crossed the line even though they’ve released this new feature. They also need to realize they can’t sit here and tell us to stop using it all together. We’re loyal to them, we bring them revenue, we’ve made them the success they are today and for them to sit there and to tell us they aren’t going to listen or make changes is a slap in the face.
September 7th, 2006 at 9:40 am
Mark Zuckerberg: Founder of Facebook Responds. Read comments at: http://techaddress.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/mark-zuckerberg-founder-of-facebook-responds/