Palo Alto, CA – In just a few years Facebook has gone from a small college-boy start-up to one of the most dominant media forces the world has ever seen. With over 350 million users, the site boasts the kind of exposure that traditional mediums
could never have dreamed of before. That success has made the company one of the most admired in the world but that success has also put them in a very precarious position. Competitors aside, Facebook’s biggest challenge is its own success and the headaches that can come with that.
One of the key components of the rise of Facebook has been the dedication the company has shown towards privacy. Unlike predecessors such as MySpace, Facebook has prided itself on the ability for users to control who sees what on the social networking site. Now the company has renewed its dedication to that privacy, revamping the network and prompting users to reassess their own privacy while on the site. Many observers are applauding the effort by the company to ensure that users are as secure as they would like to be, but one group who gets a great deal of enjoyment out of those previously lax rules is more than a little upset by the changes.
“One of our primary goals is to consistently improve Facebook and expand what our users can do through the site, and that includes providing them with new tools to help control their information. The features we’re announcing today aren’t the end point, but are simply the latest step in our iterative process. Great suggestions helped us get here, and we look forward to the feedback that will help us develop the next innovation in privacy and user control,” said Chris Cox, vice president of product management. “The visibility of content created by minors – defined as those Facebook users aged 18 and under – will be limited to only those contacts labelled as "friends" or "friends of friends", or within a user's school or work networks, even if they set their profile so that it is visible to everyone on the site.”
Facebook officials did not state whether or not the privacy changes would affect employees of the company or just average users. Either way many believe that stalkers and lurkers are going to have a much more difficult time navigating the site in the future.
“While it will definitely give users of the site a little more confidence that they are looking out for them the truth is they are segregating a large segment of their user base, a segment that helped to bring them success when they were just starting. Things have to change of course and you have to make the transition from the hardcore users to the mainstream, but they will likely see an erosion of users,” said Scrape TV Technology analyst Ken Kevins. “With the number of people they have using the site it’s unlikely that they will be dramatically hurt by the erosion, but they are putting a lot of their power users on the outs and that is going to make a lot of people angry.”
Users are already reporting previously accessible wall posts and photo albums to be closed, resulting in many closed accounts.
“I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see a traffic spike at MySpace. As much as they have fallen out of favour in recent years their privacy rules are very lax which makes it the perfect venue for this kind of behaviour. We could be seeing the beginning of the return of MySpace,” continued Kevins. “Other sites with little or no privacy concerns could also see an uptick with this new policy. Facebook, because it so huge, is unlikely to be harmed in any significant way but in 2006 people would have said the same thing about MySpace and this little college start-up.”
Many critics are concerned that Facebook stalkers may return to traditional methods of pursuing people, resulting in real world dangers.
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