Jay Meattle has a great post which includes the following image of traffic to the privacy settings within Facebook:
Jay suggests that the above chart illustrates that users need to be further educated about privacy on Facebook. For what many in the blogosphere and mainstream media have coined the “Beacon Fiasco” it appears that it may not have actually been as much of a fiasco for Facebook. Approximately half a percent of users visit their privacy settings each week. Following the announcement that Facebook profiles would be accessible to search engines privacy settings traffic doubled. This is in contrast to traffic following the Beacon Fiasco which was ultimately flat.
Do Facebook users care about privacy? According to Jay they definitely do and the spike in traffic following Facebook’s decision to grant search engine access to user profiles should illustrate users’ concern for their privacy. The lack of traffic growth during the Beacon Fiasco implies that users were not thoroughly educated on the issue. Honestly, who’s job is it to educate the user? Should users self-educate or should this be a role that Facebook plays?
My opinion is that the user should educate them self just as they do prior to signing a contract. What do you think?
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"…prior to signing a contract."If so, then Beacon should have been opt-in in the first place vs. opt-out, right?
Comment by Jay — February 20, 2008 @ 5:40 am
You have to love the irony of Compete watching clickstreams of Facebook user's privacy portal pages.
"The medium is the message"There is no more privacy online! :-0
Comment by David Henderson — February 20, 2008 @ 6:14 am
"…prior to signing a contract."
If so, then Beacon should have been opt-in in the first place vs. opt-out, right?
Comment by Jay — February 20, 2008 @ 6:40 am
You have to love the irony of Compete watching clickstreams of Facebook user's privacy portal pages.
"The medium is the message"
There is no more privacy online! :-0
Comment by David Henderson — February 20, 2008 @ 7:14 am
I seem to remember the privacy page being linked on the front page of every users home screen during the open search announcement. jay wins at jump to conclusions and you can call him out on it.
Comment by hoodrat — February 20, 2008 @ 10:12 pm
I seem to remember the privacy page being linked on the front page of every users home screen during the open search announcement. jay wins at jump to conclusions and you can call him out on it.
Comment by hoodrat — February 21, 2008 @ 2:12 am
[...] may all be things that Facebook could consider when maintaining, creating and raising awareness about its existing privacy settings options and are also things that other existing and future [...]
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