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Good post. The problem is that the privacy needs of the users of social networking sites are at odds with the commercial interests of the social networking site
by casca 14y ago
Good post. The problem is that the privacy needs of the users of social networking sites are at odds with the commercial interests of the social networking sites. Google is desperately trying to show that Google+ is competing with Facebook so the more public the data is by default, the better. Also, they see from Facebook that most people don't care about privacy.
The problem for Google+ is that people already have Facebook for their non-geeky friends so it has become primary for tech people who care more about these things. They could just try leverage that and stay more specialized, but that's unlikely to happen.
- asarazan 14y agoThe second paragraph nails it pretty well. I think the more powerful features of G+ will eventually even that out, e.g. Hangouts being one of the best options around for conference video chat, automatic photo uploading, etc.
- joe_the_user 14y agoAlso, they see from Facebook that most people don't care about privacy. I think it is more accurate to say "most people don't think about privacy". That is, most people just don't consider the implications of what's going to happen with all the unprivate things they do online. It's not that people have thought about what privacy online would be like and don't care about not having it.
- shmerl 14y agoThat's why normal social network should not have profit goals which exploit users' privacy. It should serve the purpose of social interactions, and not the goal of profiting on users' profiles sold to third parties.
- asto 14y agoThe problem is that the privacy needs of the users of social networking sites are at odds with the commercial interests of the social networking sites. Not necessarily. If Google is looking at stuff I share on google+ to find out more about me, I'm okay with it especially if they're targeting ads better. I know there will always be ads on websites, might as well suffer ads that I am more likely to be interested in. The problem for Google+ is that people already have Facebook for their non-geeky friends so it has become primary for tech people who care more about these things. Google+'s demographic is now like what Gmail's was long ago- Mostly geeky guys who got beta invites and their geeky friends who got invites passed on. It takes a while for things like email and social sites to propagate to a majority of the internet population (because most people are heavily invested in the predecessor)
- jrockway 14y agoI don't think public information or real names are particularly important from a business standpoint. What information does the name on your government-issued ID supply when your account already has your posts, posts of people you interact with, your email, things you've searched for, and so on? The only thing that needs to be public is your profile, so the network can grow virally as your friends discover you and join too. But Google doesn't even require that.