ScottSevener.com

I found myself agreeing with a lot of the points from this Diggnation clip where Kevin and Alex give their feedback on a recent article alleging 10 Reasons Why YOU Should Quit Facebook . Kevin provides a unique perspective as the CEO of another large social networking site and he hits on a lot of good points that actually make sense if you peel back the pure “corporations are evil” layer and actually try to look at it from the angle of someone trying to grow a business…

http://revision3.com/diggnation/facebook/top-10-reasons-why-you-should-quit-facebook

I guess the funny thing is, the more I hear everyone complaining about all of Facebook’s privacy blunders, the biggest threat that always gets thrown around is, “Well I’ll just stop using it – Facebook’s not all that great…” and maybe I don’t know exactly how they’re using it, but from my own perspective, believe it or not I’d actually disagree.

The reason for this is that sure, I’ve had an online presence for a long time. I’ve written a blog since 2003, I’ve ran websites featuring my writing since 1999, and even maintained groups on telnet systems before that. Add Twitter on top of everything and there’s certainly no shortage of me online, but here’s the thing – not everyone is like me. In fact, the vast majority of my friends and family aren’t, but Facebook changed all of that. Most of my friends would never actually maintain a blog or even get into something like Twitter, but for some reason they’ll put random status updates up on Facebook when something interesting happens in their lives. And the same with photos – before Facebook (and admittedly MySpace), you pretty much had to sign up for a separate service like Flickr to post photos online, but now you can include those on your Facebook page, too.

So hands down, I think one of the huge benefits to Facebook is that they’ve created a conduit to create online presences for people who otherwise normally wouldn’t have one … which unfortunately is also somewhat of a burden because as these people are new to the concept of putting their lives online, unfortunately they’re kind of stupid as far as knowing what they should and shouldn’t be concerned about posting. Also a factor is the concern about what you consider private – I distinctly remember a scene a few years back when some of my family was shocked that you could type my Grandparents’ address into Google Maps and see their house pinpointed on a map, even though technically anyone with a phonebook and a road atlas could’ve done the same thing decades ago. It’s a perception of what could happen – are you concerned that someone knows what town you live in, or that they know what flavor of ice cream you ate last night because you threw up a post that said, “Mmmmmm – I love me some Chunky Monkey!”

I guess ultimately it’s a matter of educating this new crowd, and the trouble is, I’m not sure if that’s Facebook’s responsibility or someone else’s. I saw one rant the other day about how Facebook is deceiving when you join because of the lack of information on its homepage before you sign-up, which I think is a bunch of bullshit because the users still need to have some responsibility when they sign up. You don’t just randomly jump around to various sites, giving them your name and e-mail address because they asked for it … or your phone number, or home address, for that matter. You wouldn’t hand those out to just some random guy on the street, so why put them on your Facebook profile where you have a perceived level of privacy for the free service that you’re receiving??? Or do we just scold Facebook for soliciting that kind of data in the first place? The real trouble is, I have a feeling that people are getting bent out of shape about a lot more than just addresses and phone numbers, which tells me that ultimately they just want a private service … maybe someday Facebook will offer a private version that comes with a monthly subscription fee.

Oh wait – people have already protested paying $3.99/month for Facebook, despite those being nothing more than rumors!

I don’t know what else to say except don’t post it online unless you either don’t care about it being public or you’re paying somebody specifically to keep it private. Good grief, this became a much longer rant than I ever would’ve anticipated…

People don’t think when they put things online anymore. Maybe this is partially the fault of Facebook, who boasts 400+ million users, the vast majority of them who’ve never had a public presence prior to Facebook, but I still can’t help but roll my eyes when I see one privacy complaint after another when if people truly cared about this information, they wouldn’t be putting it on their Facebook profile in the first place…

Case in point – it boggles my mind to see how many of my friends and family have their cell phone numbers on their Facebook profile, or even their home address. Now for me, I don’t care if any random stranger knows that I like Legos or Jimmy Buffett, but the numbers to call me or even show up on my doorstep? I’d certainly prefer that those aren’t made public, so I don’t post them online. I do make my e-mail address public, mainly because it’s already posted on all of my websites anyways, and I guess I just always figured if somebody really wanted to call me over the phone, they can ask me for my number via e-mail if they don’t already have it.

Maybe it’s a problem with Facebook being overly ambitious because it’s very clear that they don’t want to be one stop on the Information Superhighway – they want to be the stop on the Information Superhighway, and thus especially with their latest move with Facebook Connects, they’d love to have ties in pretty much everything you do online, from being your photo album, your address book, your e-mail and chat conduit, and your place to meet and relate with friends online. And while a lot of that may sound great to users, the problem is that it’s almost like this is a new subset of people who don’t even realize what they should and shouldn’t be sharing online anymore.

And I know it sounds cold, but frankly I just don’t have a whole lot of sympathy for that.

Really, whose responsibility should it be to control your personal information – YOU or this giant corporation that’s trying to make a profit? I know that it’s popular to blame Facebook because don’t get me wrong – they have made some really stupid moves, especially with toggling their privacy settings on and off – but ultimately Facebook can’t share something against your will if you don’t give it to them to share in the first place.

If you look at my Facebook profile, it’s completely public because honestly, that’s my perspective of the Internet. I’m not a fan of walled gardens, so anyone who wants to see my information is more than welcome. But again, I’m very careful about what I post – I don’t have my most intimate of contact information, I don’t post questionable photos of my friends and family, and I don’t put comments on my wall that might get me into trouble later. So from that perspective, I don’t really care what Facebook does with its privacy settings because I don’t think that they’re necessary.

Sure, they’re necessary if you want to use Facebook as a private platform for communicating with a specific group of friends, but then again, I’m not so sure that I’d trust a free application from a for-profit company to do something like that, knowing that their business model is based on putting your personal information to use for them! Facebook is first and foremost a corporation trying to please its investors, and even though it’s also proven to be a great tool for communicating with others, make no mistake – their loyalty is to their shareholders because they’re the ones that keep them in business. At best, you’re one of a mass population that helps them sell ads, but even then, if you’re super-strict about keeping your privacy settings locked down, you’re probably not doing much to keep them afloat, so why should they care about what you want?

(to be continued…)