Social Networks
Through the last year I have been developing and planing apps based on Facebook-Connect. Often, being german, I was amazed how much data you could pull from Facabook-User-Accounts and how freely user allow “strangers” access to their accounts. The topic of Personal-Dataprotection is a big on in Germany and always in the media. The concept of privatsphäre (german word for privacy) is based on principles of society developed in the Enlightenment. Facebook is THE entity to gather information that regularly breaks these boundaries based on “the need to know”-Principles from a individual towards society and society towards its need for order and continuity. Therefor actually claiming ones privat interesst and “social networks” as THEIR CORE ASSET. This mindset and the youth breathing through the corridors of Facebook misses out on a sense of humility and humbleness. With no doubt Facebook was there at the right time and the right moment to fill a human need to map out social connections and opend a plattform one can find old and forgoten social networks BUT and this is very important … Facebook is the TOOL and not the CONTENT it provides. The CONTENT is yours and the SOCIAL NETWORKS you map out in Facebooks belong to you. The technology helping you surely is provided to us and thats what Facebook really should focus on in their Public Relations(PR) and Research And Development(R&D). Producing PR-Material like “Diary Of Facebook” and showing business behaviour thats trying to block attemts of people moving THEIR NETWORKS to other social providers like the recently launched “Google+” really gives me the creeps. And now don’t get me wrong… I don’t think Facebook is a bad thing and SOCIAL NETWORK MAPPING is here to stay but just the latter needs to be handled in a delicate manner. YOUR NETWORKS and DATA are something that should be considered as YOUR ASSETS and not some entity that can be sold or exploited without your consent. Facebook Connect tries to do just that although I also see things done right at FACEBOOK but I am missing the earlier mentioned matureness in their Public Relations and I am missing the DISCRETION I am used to by a good bank. Let’s face it SOCIAL NETWORK PROVIDERS are just that… keepers of highly sensitive data.
Yours
Max
PS: In this sense Molly Woods of CNET.com really sums it up in here Podcasts and Blogposts.
PSS: Here is a anonymous quote that also kind of gets it down nicely: “Facebook feels like being on a Magic Hippie Bus in the sixties. Which openminded geek wouldn’t want to get on the band wagon for a spin and some puffs on the euphoria-pipe. But as seen with any youth movement… nobody want to live out the entirety of their lifetime in that Bus. So they get off at the next station after coming down from yesterdays party-ride.”
