More on the issue of Privacy in Social Networking
This article was sent to me by a friend…
Can Facebook Save Face?Source: Laura Behrens, Principal Research Analyst at GartnerIt seems the kids care about privacy after all.
Social-networking site Facebook is taking a beating from its own members after making changes to the way it displays and syndicates information. A significant number of users feel more exposed and vulnerable than they’d like, and betrayed by the company. Facebook retorts that its privacy safeguards are the same as ever, and hey, it’s all among friends, right?
Please.
How many minutes (okay, seconds) did it take you, fair reader, to wrangle an invitation to join Facebook? Perhaps you wrested it from your teenager as a condition of using the family computer at all, and now you’re astonished at all the information available to his or her dozens or hundreds of “friends.” At least some Facebook users are drawing a line between what they’re willing to have available to someone who’s looking, and what they’re willing to have pushed to anyone who has ever looked.
Facebook may have broken through thinning ice on this one. Its early base of loyal college student users grumbled when the site opened up to high school students earlier this year. Some grumbled louder about selling out to corporate interests when Facebook began accepting other organizational users.
Facebook is not alone here. Such user-relations issues will beset most or all social networking sites as they look for ways to make more money than headlines - which means those issues will cascade to companies appearing on these sites. We’ll deal with several dimensions of Web 2.0 relationships at our Media & Technology Summit in October.
Full article here