Facebook owns a staggering amount of information on its 150 million worldwide members, so it’s great to see Facebook’s founder respond quickly to privacy concerns.
Mark Zucherberg, Facebook cofounder, worked promptly to dispel recent concerns stemming from the site’s Terms of Service. Consumerist raised an alarm earlier this week when they noticed that updates to the Terms removed some limitations for retaining and distributing member information.
“Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with, ” Zurcherberg blogged. Nevertheless, criticism from Consumerist is poorly timed. It coincides with other privacy concerns.
Facebook recently launched polling ads, which have also been criticized as an invation of privacy. The new polling ads present users with questions and displays responses in a variety of formats. Users are concerned that their responses will be retained and be used as the basis for future marketing campaigns.
Reason for concern? Probably not.
Facebook has proved to be responsible and responsive to member privacy concerns. The most notably example was when 45,000 members petitioned against Facebook’s Beacon advertising program. The result? Facebook provided the ability for users to opt out of the program.
2/18/09 UPDATE: As predicted, Facebook has responded promptly to user feedback:
“Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”
Good job, Facebook!
About Troy Janisch
Pingback: Mylife.com: A new tool for bargain-seeking stalkers | Social Meteor: Break Through & Make an Impact with Social Media