Facebook's Pimping Your Data

Facebook has been having a difficult time of late. While the site should be adding some 13-15 million new active users in the weeks since the F8 conference, these numbers represent a drop relative to growth during the same period last year. Between serious security flaws, bewildering privacy settings including a privacy policy longer than the unamended U.S. Constitution, plans to share private information with websites, and numerous high-profile defections, including plans for a Global Quit Facebook Day, one is left to ponder what is happening to the social juggernaut.

The recent problems began when Facebook announced its Open Graph protocol, which - in a nutshell - allows websites to seamlessly integrate various Facebook components, such as the now-infamous "Like" buttons which are appearing all over the place. The new program is simpler to use, making it much easier for companies to plaster buttons all over the web. If a site visitor is signed into Facebook, pressing the Like button makes it a simple affair to post a link back to the content on the user's news feed on Facebook, thereby sharing the content with his or her friends. While this can be a boon for spreading the word, privacy advocates are taking issue with a number of the program's provisions. At the F8 conference in April, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company was dropping its existing data retention policies, which restricted the sort of information companies could collect from Facebook users as well as how long that information could be stored. Coinciding with this is an increase in the amount of information Facebook is sharing with affiliated websites. As Zuckerberg noted during the Open Graph introduction, "The default is now social," which many have taken to mean, "You no longer have any privacy."

Privacy advocates are fuming, with renewed calls for government hearings over Facebook's privacy policies, with New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer leading the way. Many will recall the Beacon controversy, which ultimately led to a class-action suit being filed against Facebook and its affiliates, as well as the program being shuttered.

Social applications like Facebook have enabled a stunning array of techniques for sharing content across the web, but many find themselves uncomfortable with the opaque means by which this occurs. A user who is signed into Facebook will see on CNN's front page a list of articles that his or her Facebook friends have "liked." Being signed into Facebook makes it a one-click affair to share articles with a user's friends. The utility in this is obvious, but these integrations beg their own questions.

PC World recently linked to a privacy tool which can scan your Facebook privacy settings and tell you what information you may be inadvertently sharing with the world. Another similar application will show you what information a site can pull from your profile without granting it any special permissions on Facebook. Perhaps most interesting is what information you have no choice but to share.

These debates are important for the future of the web. As marketers we welcome the tools that Facebook, Twitter, and many other social applications provide for helping clients engage with customers. At the same time, it is important to remember that having access to a variety of tools means being judicious in their execution. There is a strong expectation of backlash against businesses which play fast and loose with user data, as Google learned the hard way when it was forced to apologize after using private Gmail contacts to initialize a network of friends for its Buzz social network. Many Facebook users are still unaware that their information is being shared. As always, listening to your constituents is important, and engaging with them means more than getting them to simply share your content. An engaged customer bragging about your product on Twitter is far more valuable than someone simply liking a page on your website.

Update 5/21/2010: The Wall Street Journal is now reporting Facebook is violating its own privacy policy.

About the Author: Joseph Jaramillo

Joseph Jaramillo is Off Madison Ave's Senior Technologist, and leads our app development team. He's been building applications for over a decade, and specializes in the Ruby on Rails web framework and iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch) mobile platform.

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