looking glass

ZDnet recently posted the under-reported story that Facebook is quietly changing its privacy policy- again. According to the story posted by Larry Dignan, last Friday, in the evening, Facebook issued a proposed privacy setting change where Facebook will share user data with external sites automatically.  The author of the post notes that the timing of the announcement is significant.  When the statement was released, the blogosphere lit up in reaction over the weekend.  And then, come Monday, the hubbub was gone.  Dignan writest that “weekend revolutions don’t quite work:.

Does the burial of this announcement on a Friday afternoon indicate that even Facebook is nervous about user’s reactions to the changes?  Is the social media behemoth worried that users will flee at the thought of their personal data being sent to third party sites and applications without their consent.  At the recent OMMA Global conference in San Francisco, I attended a session where I heard a prominent online ad executive state, more or less, that the future of the social media revolution lies in young people sharing everything about their lives and not caring who knows.  This struck me as naive, and not as a solid business model.  Maybe there will always be exhibitionist 14 year olds who want everything about their lives spread to the universe.

But Facebook is increasingly made up of  older individuals who do care what is done with their personal information.  Will some users, upon learning about this, leave the service?   It will be interesting to see what happens, for sure…