Quit Facebook was supposed to be a day where legions of Facebook users left the network in protest over its privacy policies. The movement, by just about any measure, was a flop, with approximate 33,000 of the social network’s 400 plus million users signing a pledge to quit the service. But while the movement may have ended with a whimper that doesn’t mean there is a strong undercurrent of fury directed at the social networking site.
Bruce Nussbaum, former assistant managing editor for Business Week, and now professor of Innovation and Design at Parsons School of Design, goes so far as to say its users are at war with its advertisers thanks to Facebook's heavy hand with its privacy policies, in a blog post for the Harvard Business Review. "Facebook is behaving as though it owned not only its proprietary technology platform but the friendship networks created on it. It doesn't. Millennials believe that ownership of their networks of friends belongs to them, not Facebook, and resist their commercialization."
"Now Facebook is belatedly agreeing to streamline and strengthen its privacy tools, which will lower the anger of its audience but increase the anxiety of its advertisers," he continues. "The brand value of Facebook has already taken a hit and competing social media platforms that promise privacy are beginning to appear."
Facebook's failure to recognize these issues deeply - particularly the reasons behind users' discontent - threatens its future Profits, Nussbaum concludes. " At the moment, it has an audience that is at war with its advertisers. Not good."
What They Know
There are indications that Facebook tracks - and possibly shares - far more details about its users that many realize.
Internal compliance manuals for law enforcement for Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft reviewed by the Washington Post show an extensive data collection. Microsoft tracks the Xbox LIVE start and end dates and times for game-playing and notes the game played, the Post reported. Yahoo keeps chat and instant messenger logs for 45 to 60 days. It also notes the time/date and IP address for when content is added or deleted to someone's profile or to its Flickr photo service.
But it is Facebook's data collection that is perhaps the most detailed. "For every user id, Facebook keeps a log of the IP address that accessed the account, the date and time, and what exactly the user did - clicking on an advertisement, looking at someone else's profile, posting a photo or sending a message to a friend, etc.," the Post reported.
"The Facebook Effect"
According to a soon to be released book called "The Facebook Effect," written by David Kirkpatrick, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg would monitor users' relationships to try to see if he could determine who would break up, and when, based on their Facebook communications and posts. (via All Facebook).
By examining friend relationships and communications patterns Zuckerberg could determine with about 33% accuracy who a user was going to be in a relationship with a week from now. "To deduce this he studied who was looking which profiles, who your friends were friends with, and who was newly single, among other indicators," Kirkpatrick wrote. "Are you busy chatting with another girl instead of your girlfriend? Are you being tagged in a lot of photos with the same person? Facebook has a lot of information about who you are viewing regularly - or lusting over - as well as what your communication patterns are."
For marketers, the growing unease - which could eventually morph into regulatory action - with privacy is something that needs to be taken into account. In a blog post at IT Business Edge, Ann All gets to the heart of the matter from the consumer's perspective. "My son is 7, and I still get coupons for diapers and other baby supplies. I assume it's because my grocer is using outdated data." All, whose post is about privacy violations, in fact says she wishes her grocer would tweak its underlying business processes to offer me more relevant ads - "but not so relevant that it creeps me out."
