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It's also worth noting that a lot of facebook's initial appeal, especially when compared to Myspace at the time, beyond its aesthetic improvement, was the fact
by tewks 16y ago
It's also worth noting that a lot of facebook's initial appeal, especially when compared to Myspace at the time, beyond its aesthetic improvement, was the fact that it seemed to stand for privacy. The status quo, myspace, was a public-only profile. A facebook profile was accessible only to your contacts or to your school. The available options have slowly but continuously drifted away from that simple promise. A lot of the site's initial traction was driven by huge demand for a reasonable set of privacy controls: myspace was useful but creepy. The argument that the web has moved on in the past six years and that the demand for privacy has lessened is perhaps a red herring, though only time, consumer demand, and viable alternatives will tell: there might be more of an opportunity here than people realize.
Overall, I think this is a really interesting question that society is confronting and it will be fun to see how it plays out.
Side note: I think a lot of the tech press and blogosphere miss a lot of the subtleties here because, well, people like Arrington, Scoble et al. weren't in school at the time, making the cautious decision to open an account. This has been a revolution led by young people, who are often surprisingly concerned about their privacy and don't depend or plan on Internet celebrity for their livelihoods. It feels a bit like eternal September except in reverse: as the demographic ages, the basic tenents erode.
- CGamesPlay 16y agoCan you enumerate on how the privacy settings are dwindling? Which ones? I feel like I've had greater control over my privacy with more recent changes to Facebook.
- argv_empty 16y agoAs an example, "Likes and Interests," "Education and Work," and parts of "Basic Information" used to be text in your profile with a search link. That search would only show people who had chosen (via privacy settings) to display the relevant part of their profile to you. They are now group-like "Connections" to community pages, whose membership is not secret.
- tewks 16y agoThe privacy options have gotten really complicated. Under the original iterations of the model, the user always knew what the deal was. Now, it is impossible to know what exactly what is exactly going on. The original submission exemplifies this. I don't mean to sound critical. It's not easy to innovate while aso supporting the needs of 400m+ users. Obviously. a team of smart people have put a lot of time and effort into this system, but it won't ever be perfect. Again, it's been an exciting area to watch evolve and I suspect this will continue to be the case for quite some time.
- blackswan 16y agoI remember when all my friends joined Facebook - it happened between high school and university. A couple of them had MySpace during high school but everybody had Facebook by the end of the first year of university. Back then I distinctly remember some friends motivating their getting Facebook when they didn't have Myspace by explaining how Facebook only let your friends and university peers see your profile - as per the excellent parent comment. I recently explained to these same non-tech folks that applications they have installed can see and now store all their data. They didn't realise this and I don't think they really believed me - perceptions, once formed, take a lot to change! And when only the tech media really discusses API access etc. it's not surprising that most people have not registered the change in how Facebook treats their data. I quote a non-tech business major friend who was in the above conversation: "It's unintentional bait and switch man - he got everyone signed up by making things better than the other sites and then his investors realised how much money they could make, changed the way data is handled and all the clueless users won't realise it until its too late and Facebook runs the internet!"
- mortenjorck 16y agoIronic that Myspace created nowhere near the privacy crisis that Facebook has simply by offering no privacy settings at all. Unlike Facebook, Myspace offered no illusion of privacy.