Thursday, August 19, 2010

facebook again

Aarrghh!

I was gonna blog about this new Facebook data collection feature, but why rehash a the same thoughts? From Michael Coates:

"The last thing to consider is facebook's track record on protecting data. How long will it be until advertisers find a way to pilfer this data from people? Or what about the next privacy setting overhaul which changes the defaults or makes it more difficult to control who sees your location data?"

And the vicious cycle begins again. I don't agree that it's all about advertisers (I'm an optimist here), but the wash-rinse-repeat cycle gets tiresome: (1) add new data collection feature (2) public outrage (3) respin privacy settings (4) repeat.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a good overview of the places privacy settings here:

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-places-privacy-2010-08

Anonymous said...

I don't agree that it's all about advertisers

Why not? Do you think they will make out the air?

I can't understand how Facebook (Disgracebook) became such life or death thing.

It's like slaves discussing how to avoid their masters abusing them instead of trying to free themselves.

Please Master don't rape my daughter!

Anonymous said...

Why not? Do you think they will make money out the air?

Sid Stamm said...

@Anonymous/9:31pm: I think Facebook is trying to discover new ways to make money that don't involve ads. They're clearly still using ads, but they realize they're sitting on a goldmine of information and want to break out of the ads bubble and do something original.

This is a gamble, but if they figure out a new way to monetize, they end up with a serious jump on the competition and pretty much own whatever market they discover.