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At last week’s F8 developers’ conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled plans to offer “instant personalization” all over the web , a way for websites to become instantly more social. Without even signing in, sites gain access to publicly available Facebook information like your name, profile picture, friend list and more, in order to personalize your experience on the site. At launch, only three partner sites are offering this feature: Microsoft’s new Docs.com , Internet radio Pandora and user review site Yelp . You can opt-out of this experience if you like, but by default, you’re opted in. Sponsor These changes have raised concerns among privacy advocates and are even now being questioned by government officials like U.S. Senator Charles Schumer who is urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to look into how social networks handle our private information. And yet… and yet …after spending the weekend on these “instantly personalized” sites, I have to admit…begrudgingly, mind you…that the experience itself is amazing. Online Music Gets Personal, Too Personal? Pandora’s Internet radio is a service I usually partake of via its mobile application on my iPhone, not its regular website. But after the launch of the newly personalized Pandora , I had to take a look. And it was worth it. I immediately discovered which of my friends had the same musical interests as I do. My editor, Richard MacManus, for example, is also a fan of The Killers! Who knew? And apparently, a whole bunch of friends are getting into MGMT now. But finding connections like these aren’t the only types of discoveries you can make here. As social media user extraordinaire Robert Scoble found out , you can easily discover your friends’ more embarrassing personal tastes too. Kenny G?, Scoble laughingly chides a co-worker after stumbling upon his decidedly unhipster musical interests. These are precisely the types of things we want to stay hidden. Kenny G, for instance. But also our secret obsession with that attractive actor or actress, our fondness for pictures of cute kitties, our forays into celebrity gossip sites when we have a reputation for being intelligent thinkers, our secret Star Wars addiction and so forth and so on. While there aren’t ” instantly personalized ” sites showing you all these types of interests just yet, believe me, there will be. If Facebook has its way (and guess what? It will), your real identity , not just the public parts you’ve willingly shared in the past, will be revealed to anyone and everyone unless you take action to opt-out. The Real You Can No Longer Be Hidden This is precisely as it should be, Facebook CEO Zuckberberg, more or less said. Earlier this year, he made statements regarding Facebook’s new openness, claiming that if he built the social network now, he would make a lot of the data housed there more public by default. This would reflect the current social norms, he said. But that’s not exactly true. Facebook isn’t reflecting social norms, it’s attempting to create them. That said, what an amazing creation it is. On Yelp, I can find the reviews my Facebook friends authored with just a click. I can see who else really digs that local sushi place. And I can do all this without going through the whole “re-friending” process that Web 2.0 sites have put me through in the past again and again. I’m there, my friends are there, and I didn’t have to do anything to make that happen. Frankly, it feels right. (Fellow ReadWriteWeb blogger Mike Melanson agrees .) A Minute on the Lips… But it’s oh so wrong, isn’t it? By giving into to Facebook’s vision for the web, we’re ceding control of our data, our likes, our interests, our “social graph” (aka who we know, who we friend) – everything – to one company. Historically , one very, very closed company . We’re definitely worried about the implications of that. You should be too. But in the meantime, like that calorie-rich dessert we know we shouldn’t eat, we’re sampling Facebook’s web and secretly savoring its deliciousness. Why does everything that’s so wrong have to feel so good? Blast you, Facebook. Blast you. Discuss
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Giving in to Facebook: A Weekend on the New "Instantly Personalized" Web (Op-Ed)
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A new study released earlier this month seems to contradict findings from Pew Internet Project’s February report on the declining blog authorship and blog readership among the youngest generation of online users. Instead of seeing a downward trend in blogging, the latest research appears, at first glance, to have us questioning those prior reports. According to the latest study, this one from BlogHer and iVillage (red flag?) and co-sponsored by Ketchum and The Nielsen Company , young adults known as “millenials” are the top demographic group in both reading and writing blogs with nearly one-third reporting they read blogs and just over 40% saying they blog themselves. So was the earlier study – the one claiming “kids don’t blog” anymore – wrong? Sponsor Odd Demographics Studied In the new study, the focus was on four age groups: millenials (ages 18-25), Gen X/Y (26-42), Boomers (43-61) and Seniors (62-76). This is a confusing segmentation of demographic groups because they’ve lumped in some of the millenials with the the “Gen X” group to create a hybrid group called “Gen X/Y.” The term “millenials,” however, is often used interchangeably with “Gen Y,” so it’s unclear why they’ve decided to break up that demographic group in this way. To boost Gen X’s numbers, perhaps? We can’t be sure. Ignoring Those Under 18 More importantly, the study simply ignores the youngest generation, the one we like to call “generation I” or the “iGeneration” (you can guess why), which was a major focus of Pew’s study. In fact, Pew’s study showed that only 14% of tweens and teens ages 12 to 17 now report that they blog , down from 25% only four years ago . And only 52% reporting reading and commenting on their friends’ blog, down from over three-quarters back in 2006. In other words, the Internet’s newest users aren’t blogging or all that interested in reading blogs. Instead, they prefer Facebook, said the study. It’s their method of communication between friends and for getting the latest news. Yes, sigh, Facebook is the new Internet. And the social network’s latest moves will only further solidify that position with the launch of the universal “like” button for the entire web, the “instant personalization” provided by websites like Pandora and Yelp (to start), the “sign in with Facebook” boxes that appear on seemingly every site now and so on. How this youngest online generation uses the Internet is an important trend to watch. Although their habits may change over time, it’s worth considering that their general disinterest in sharing their thoughts, feelings, news and ideas via blogging is a trend that will continue as they age. After all, who needs to blog when you have Facebook? BlogHer/iVillage’s Findings For what it’s worth, the BlogHer/iVillage study found that those 18-25 were the group most likely to write or read blogs, with 40.4% reporting the write blogs and 30.3% reporting they read them . The mysterious Gen X/Y group was a close second with 28.1% of the group saying they were blog authors and 29.3% saying they were blog readers. Some of the other numbers are questionable, although we have no way of proving their legitimacy or lack thereof. But really: 12.8% of bloggers are seniors? This is perhaps the most shocking number of them all. Nothing against seniors, of course, but I live in a state filled with them , and I have yet to meet a single senior who even knows what a blog is, much less authors one. At the end of the day, the study’s numbers just feel a little too bullish on this whole blogging thing for my tastes. Plus, there’s little info about the methodology included in the report and, then there’s the fact that BlogHer, a blogging community for women, is, in part, behind the research. The truth of the matter is that neither this latest study nor Pew’s research is likely painting an entirely accurate picture of the blogging landscape. We’ve questioned Pew’s methodology many times in the past and we’re skeptical of positive studies put out by those who would benefit from the news.
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Facebook today announced that application developers will be allowed to store user data for more than 24 hours, removing a major restriction that the company had imposed on its ecosystem for years. Competitors like Twitter and MySpace had no such restrictions and now Facebook is in the same boat. Founder Mark Zukerberg used to say that the rule against storing data was essential to protect users and their privacy. Where are those now? Privacy, Zuckerberg told me in a March 2008 interview, “is the vector around which Facebook operates.” Two years later, not so much. In a December 2009 interview , Zuckerberg said that Facebook’s new public-by-default privacy settings reflected how he would build the site if he were to do it again from scratch today. Compare below what Zuckerberg said in 2008 and what today’s new Developer Terms of Service say about holding on to user data now. Sponsor I believe that the Facebook policy change on storing user data is a net win for the web: it will enable all kinds of new innovation. It was that kind of innovation that I was asking about two years ago when I got the following answer about privacy that just doesn’t sound right anymore today. Zuckerberg on Data Portability, March 10th 2008 interview with ReadWriteWeb : “If you export your friends list, does their contact information come with that? What if they change their privacy settings later? Right now if you take an action that gets published to your friends’ news feeds, but then if you change your privacy settings later to be more restrictive – then those events disappear from the news feeds. If that data is published off-site, then there’s no longer any control over the data for users. ” (emphasis added) And today, on the new Developers’ Terms of Service : You must give users control over their data by posting a privacy policy that explains what data you collect, and how you will use, store, and/or transfer their data….You may cache data you receive from the Facebook API in order to improve your application’s user experience, but you should try to keep the data up to date …You will delete all data you receive from us concerning a user if the user asks you to do so, and will provide a mechanism for users to make such a request. (emphasis added) One thing that remains the same? “You cannot use a user’s friend list outside of your application, even if a user consents to such use.” Facebook doesn’t want you taking your data out of the Facebook ecosystem, to other competing services, but it doesn’t insist that 3rd parties under its shadow check in with you daily anymore, either. It’s hard not to feel a little cynical about that. Discuss
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Facebook Data & Privacy: So Much Has Changed in Two Years
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During today’s F8 keynote, Mark Zuckerberg announced a number of new products and features for Facebook, including a new collaboration with Microsoft. With Docs.com , Microsoft’s FUSE labs just launched an online document editor and viewer that connects directly to Facebook and uses all of the new social features for third-party sites that Facebook announced today. Docs, for example, allows users to share documents with their Facebook friends, edit them collaboratively and discover documents that their friends have uploaded to their profiles. Sponsor Creating Documents in the Cloud and Sharing them With Your Facebook Friends With Docs, you can create new documents right in the web application or upload them from your desktop. Docs gives you the option to share documents privately or you can allow a select group of your Facebook friends to edit the document with you. A button next to every document allows you to add additional editors at any point. In our tests, the editor wasn’t working properly yet (though the document viewer works just fine). We will take a closer look at Docs editing features once it is fully up and running. In addition to being able to create and view documents, Docs.com’s Facebook integration will also allow your friends to discover these documents (if you choose to share them). You can also add a new tab to your profile page that shows all the documents you have shared with your friends. This also means that you can use Facebook to discuss these documents in public, just like you would discuss any other status update on the site. Attacking Google There can be little doubt that this is a direct attack against Google Docs . Even though Google Docs only offers relatively basic editing features, the service’s collaboration tools allow it to stand out from Microsoft’s products. Until now, collaborating on Microsoft Office documents was always a rather difficult task for Office users and generally involved using third-party software. It remains to be seen how many people in an office environment will really want to connect their documents to Facebook. For students and other Facebook users who aren’t using this tool in a corporate environment and just want to share documents with each other, however, this looks like a great solution. Discuss
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Docs.com: Facebook and Microsoft Go After Google Docs
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Facebook appears to be preparing to launch a recommendation service that will be used on sites around the web. On the day before the F8 developers’ conference, independent developer Jesse Stay has posted code found on Facebook’s GitHub open source code repository account. Facebook is already very practiced at offering recommendations on-site: its News Feed technology pulls the items out of its Live Feed based on who and what you’ve shown is most important to you among all your friends and their activities. Facebook knows more about you than probably any other consumer service online, probably more even than Google. Recommendation could in fact become bigger than search, and so this feature could become one of Facebook’s biggest moves. Sponsor Stay believes the feature will function like Google SideWiki , the sidebar of running commentary about a page that website owners have no control over but that hasn’t really caught on with users, either. Two things you can be sure of: Facebook recommendations will make use of a website visitor’s Facebook friend connections and the feature will almost definitely make publishers happier than the uncontrollable Google SideWiki did. recommendations site=”abc.com” height=”300″ width=”400″ /> should be replaced by an iframe showing recommendations for the abc website (pending checkin on the server side). Recommendation would be huge for Facebook. Beyond just being cool for users, recommendation is compelling for site publishers because it’s like pre-emptive search. The language in that code implies to me that the feature will display content recommended to a user because of interest by friends in certain content on the site. Presumably if any of your friends have shared links to the site you’re visiting, you’ll be encouraged to visit those pages in particular. Perhaps recommendation will go further than that. It’s really hard to know, but we’ll probably find out tomorrow. That’s the question: is this a way for you to recommend content or to have content recommended to you? If it’s primarily one, I’m guessing it’s the latter. Make no mistake: recommendation could be a huge addition to Facebook’s arsenal. Recommendation technologies are something we’ve covered for years here at ReadWriteWeb . We asked a year ago if Facebook was secretly working on a recommendation technology , though the feature we saw then turned out to be something else. Beyond just being cool for users, recommendation is compelling for site publishers because it’s like pre-emptive search. Everyone wants to give their site owners an opportunity to search for the content they want to find, but even better is prompting them with what’s effectively personalized search results as soon as they land on a page. Opt-out/opt-in? This essential question of privacy will be put to the test in many ways, as Facebook continues to extend its system of identity across the web. Facebook knows enough about you, your interests, your friends, their interests, their friends and their interests too that it should be able to nail recommendations fairly well. Discuss
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Facebook May Launch Recommendation Service For Other Websites
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