Facebook's allure...
2007-07-16 13:29
San Francisco - The secret of
Facebook's success, and its future viability, hinges on how the
social network site protects privacy, taming the anything-goes
intrusiveness of what might as well be known as the "world wild
web".
Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said users
want greater control over who sees their personal information,
rather than expecting total privacy, or anonymity, the concept
underlying much of the legal thinking on privacy for more than
a century.
"Privacy is beginning to transform from the classic 'right
to be left alone' to this notion that 'I want control over my
information,'" Kelly said in an interview on the sidelines of a
Fortune Magazine technology conference held here last week.
Started in 2004 by then-undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg as a
social site for fellow Harvard University students, Facebook
has been opened up over the last year to users of all ages, who
have a degree of control over who sees what personal details.
These privacy controls paradoxically encourage users to
reveal more about themselves within their approved circle of
friends than they would do on the wide-open web. As a result,
many post cellphone numbers, reveal political loyalties or
even show changes in their dating status for friends to see.
Facebook has seen membership spike 25% to more than
30 million since May, when it turned the site into a big tent
for outsiders to build software inside it. This lets users
engage in online activities while limiting exposure to security
pitfalls.
"We have tried to take a very control-based approach for
our users, so Facebook information doesn't leak out on the web
in general," Kelly said. "Privacy, as anonymity, is declining,
but privacy, as control, is on the rise."
The business of privacy
As a company, Facebook's livelihood hinges on how it balances the trade-offs between privacy and openness.
The free, advertising-supported site runs a limited number
of conventional web banner ads. But it also is looking at how
to offer ads that match people's expressed interests without
frightening users that their data will be abused by marketers.
"In a trusted environment you share more," Kelly said of
the business logic of insuring privacy. "There is an
opportunity to target advertising, as long as you keep that
trusted environment."
Facebook board member and financial backer Jim Breyer, a
partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners, said the
company would do well over $100m in revenue in 2007, be
profitable, and have significant positive cash flow this year.
Breyer also sought to knock down rumours the company may be
for sale - the latest speculation last week was that Microsoft
Corp should consider paying $6bn for Facebook.
"We continue to focus on building the best stand-alone
company we can be and, simply said, are not for sale," Breyer
said.
Privacy meets voyeurism
Facebook is no privacy nirvana, nor does it mean to be.
Indeed, its core function is to enable a kind of virtual
voyeurism that makes it easy for members to post comments,
photos and videos about their own lives while keeping tabs on
what their network of online friends are up to.
It does this by offering an automated news feed of what
friends are doing on their own Facebook profile pages - a kind
of gossip column among friends.
Highlighting the tension over privacy at the core of the
site, when the feature was introduced last September, members
temporarily revolted until the company introduced greater
controls over what information their friends could see.
In another example of how privacy protections play out on
Facebook, photos are often shared among users, but individuals
retain the right to delete their names from photo labels,
providing a degree of insulation from personal embarrassment.
While large and growing, Facebook functions like an endless
series of online private clubs. The average Facebook user has
access to only one in 200 of its members, Kelly said.
Among diehard Facebook users, many of whom have hundreds of
connections to friends, a more subtle privacy complaint arises.
As it now stands, Facebook software treats friends pretty much
equally, a byproduct of its college-campus roots.
But as more users add different types of contacts -
bosses, family members, colleagues, business acquaintances -
demand grows for more refined privacy controls to distinguish
between various types of real-world relationships.
Kelly said the company was working to address the issue.
"Stay tuned: We are all about user control," he said.