facebook privacy Vs ranting digerati

Oodles of tweets and posts recently about Facebook and privacy and how it’s basically the end of the world and we should all commit Facebook suicide because Mark Zuckerberg is basically evil and out to destroy and discredit all of us through covertly stealing every last minute detail of our lives and selling them to shady mafia organisations.

In my simplistic world, I see these things.

– Zuckerberg is only twelve years old. His company is still only six years old. They are still growing up. They will make mistakes.

– Every time Facebook updates anything there’s huge uproar across Twitter and the digital world for a few days and then we accept it and move on. This is especially true of their user interface updates which are appalling if you are someone with an IA bent or just frustrating until you get used to it if you’re a normal member of the human race.

– The pace at which they’ve grown and scaled and managed to avoid the fail whale that buggered Twitter and now FourSquare is pretty extraordinary. This pace of change has meant that they’re probably like a swan, looking serene on top of the water but paddling like buggery underneath to stay afloat. This paddling like buggery is where their privacy issues lie in my simplistic world. They’ve just built workarounds as the site has spawned out of control and expectation. They are a technology company, not a slick FMCG. They build code. Facebook is a utility. I don’t care that it has no personality or zing, I don’t buy their product. I use their service to connect with friends from today and from yesterday to stay in touch, be entertained and share random and hopefully funny stuff.

– And for god’s sake people, get a grip. You can change the privacy to only show what you want to who you want. And only a matter of time before they make it easier. Here’s a handy little tool to do just that. Yes it may be a ball-ache until they catch up with their growth but flouncing and deleting your account is pretty stupid. 500m users can’t be wrong. The vast majority of whom don’t actually give a crap and enjoy using Facebook day in, day out.

Summed up neatly by George Nimeh (aka @iboy):

“I think that, despite what the ‘digerati’ thinks/says, most folks think FB is fantastic. The numbers speak for themselves, no?”

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