I feel like we are at the beginning of a turning point for Facebook on the privacy issue. Sure people complained about Internet privacy being an issue well before Facebook even existed. Yes, people have had issues with Facebook privacy many times before these most recent Facebook privacy changes. Something feels different now though. I feel like the average joe is start
ing to notice. The average joe is not about to give up Facebook (though occasionally you’ll hear someone talking about it.) The average joe loves Facebook & won’t give it up yet. But, that’s not to say they don’t notice their ever eroding privacy on Facebook.
Facebook does not seem to care, really, about people’s privacy. It feels like they will do anything & everything to expand their business & make money. I know almost every business does this, but I’m pointing it out in this particular case because I think it matters here. I think it will matter to their long-term bottom-line.
The average joe is beginning to think about the ethics of social media & their privacy. People are starting to care that all their life information is being sold & used to make money for Facebook & other companies.
Since the beginning google has strived to be an ethical company. (I don’t work for google in any way. . . I wish.) They were oddly almost ahead of their time in that sense. Ethics & privacy is going to be the new hot concept right? They got that right straight from the beginning & it will pay off big time in the long run if they can keep it up & stay on the fine line of being on the side of the user over the advertiser. Yes, their business model depends on advertisements, but more so, it depends on people using google & trusting google so that google has the data to help the advertisers. I & others are OK with giving google this data because they have always been trustworthy. I hope they never get greedy & cross the subtle line of annoying the user just to give advertisers a slightly big or bolder or slightly more intrusive ad.
I think people are starting to look for an alternative to Facebook. Or at least they are starting to think that something isn’t quite right & when that happens, people start to instinctively explore possible solutions. One would be for Facebook to change. We all love the service of Facebook & would hope the service would just change to be what we want, which is a site that respects our privacy fully. We don’t mind them making some money on some of our basic information. I’m sure there would be models that could work, but Facebook is currently pushing way to hard to quickly & obviously taking advantage of our data at the expense of our privacy.
Google has always insisted on an ethical approach & has always taken great pains to insure privacy. Of course people will point out that it hasn’t always been perfectly smooth right out the gate on many products, but when Google sees problems they always fix them quickly (buzz.) Facebook never makes moves like that or when they occasionally back-peddle they do so in very small moves & basically because they simply can’t ignore the enormous uproar (though most of the time they do just ignore it.) Facebook is realizing they are powerful & they can ignore it. After all, everyone is already on Facebook & their user base is so huge & ingrained into our society at the moment that it’s very difficult to leave since that’s where everyone is.
But it could change. Many times in technology history there have been companies that seemed to have a particular niche unbreakably locked down & some smaller company has come in & found a better way. I feel like people are looking for a “better way” to get the service we love about Facebook without the feeling that Facebook is taking advantage of our information. It’s possible to have both worlds, so if Facebook doesn’t do it, & don’t think they will, some other company will find a way to give us the Facebook type of service with a better privacy policy. I know there are plenty of people thinking about & working on this now. Yes, it will be a very hard change since everyone is on Facebook, but it can happen slowly.
I feel like Google is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this rising discontent with Facebook’s disappearing privacy. Google has the ability to create a Facebook type service. They also have the ethics to respect & value people’s privacy. They tried with Buzz (try to ignore the privacy problems they had at the beginning for a moment because they corrected it) but that service is no where near as good as Facebook unfortunately. It may have more features possibly, it may be more open, but for the average joe it doesn’t look as good as Facebook & it doesn’t “seem” as friendly & easy to use. I really wish it was. I would love for it to be really great. I’ll get more into that in the future.
GoGoog! 
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