[Infowarrior] - Facebook Pushes People to Go Public

[Richard Forno]

The Day Has Come: Facebook Pushes People to Go Public
Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / December 9, 2009 10:01 AM

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_pushes_people_to_go_public.php

Facebook announced this morning that its 350 million users will be  
prompted to make their status messages and shared content publicly  
visible to the world at large and search engines. It's a move we  
expected but the language used in the announcement is near Orwellian.  
The company says the move is all about helping users protect their  
privacy and connect with other people, but the new default option is  
to change from "old settings" to becoming visible to "everyone."

This is not what Facebook users signed up for. It's not about privacy  
at all, it's about increasing traffic and the visibility of activity  
on the site.

Information like your email address is recommended to remain limited  
to friends, but make no mistake about it - Facebook wants you to make  
the status messages you post visible to the entire internet.

According to the video explaining the changes, the new default for  
status messages is "everyone." That's a huge change. Of course it's  
not hard for people to keep their existing privacy settings, but  
confusion around what those settings are is hardly resolved by the  
phrase "old settings" and a tool-tip phrase appearing when you hover  
over that option.

A substantial backlash has already begun in comments on the Facebook  
blog post about the announcement. Previous moves by the company, like  
the introduction of the news feed, have seen user resistance as well -  
but this move cuts against the fundamental proposition of Facebook:  
that your status updates are only visible to those you opt-in to  
exposing them to. You'll now have to opt-out of being public and opt- 
in to communicating only with people you've given permission to see  
your content.
Will users go for it? If Facebook becomes a lot more like Twitter,  
will users stick around? The network of friends you've created on  
Facebook can't be taken anywhere else - access to those people off- 
site is limited due to "privacy concerns."

This is an amazing move that was announced with limited press  
attention. A Facebook group message to press was sent out at 6am, two  
hours before a press phone call. The announcement is a long, wordy and  
unclear text putting undue emphasis on Privacy when the new options  
clearly favor going public. Earlier this week the company made an  
announcement about forthcoming privacy policy changes and Open was not  
the recommended setting.

Facebook confirmed to us in a press call earlier this year that the  
company does in fact want users to post more publicly and we expected  
a site-wide call for users to loosen privacy restrictions - but not  
like this. This announcement was couched in language of user control  
and privacy.

A much more honest approach to privacy would be to encourage users to  
create lists of contacts and encourage them to select which list any  
update was visible to. Instead, that's greatly underemphasized.

Expect to see this story blow up for the rest of the year. It's a very  
big move.