RT Posts entry on 05.14.10
The Gathering Anti-Facebook Storm
Heidi Dean
Like many Facebook users, I’ve struggled to keep up with the site’s rapidly changing privacy policies, and regularly scramble to adjust my profile settings to my own comfort level. I don’t play games or take polls, and I generally keep my status updates circumspect, but still, I worry: Who knows what about me? How would I even find out what they know? And how are they using that data?
I’m not alone; Systems designer Matthew Milan and technologist Joseph Dee have started a site called QuitFaceBookDay.com that targets May 31 as a day when everyone who’s unhappy with how Facebook handles personal data can leave en masse to send a clear message. As of today, they only had 235 people committed to quitting, but meanwhile, “How do I delete my Facebook account” has become one of the top suggested searches on Google, as in the screen grab above from earlier today.
Meanwhile, the New York Times has this article about four college students who are developing Diaspora, which, according to their site, is “the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network.” Users will set up their own personal servers, called “seeds,” and will have full control over the information they share.
In true digital-age DIY fashion, they raised startup money on Kickstarter, a site that connects entrepreneurs with donors. The speed of the response gives a clue to the timeliness of their idea: They set a goal of raising $10,000 in 39 days, and met that goal in 12 days. As of today, they’ve raised $139,171 from 3,874 donors, and there are 18 days remaining in their Kickstarter countdown.
So what does all of this mean for advertisers and agencies? If a significant number of the 300-million-plus Facebook users jump ship, surely advertisers will have less interest in the space, though the company could easily convert existing data into consumer insights and sell that to advertisers instead of ads. And if corporate pages have only a small number of consumers to talk to, will they continue to dedicate time and resources to Facebook updates? Or, like Y2K, will it all come to nothing?
Heidi Dean is a writer, digital content manager and editor at Rodgers Townsend. She relies on the Golden Rule as much as possible; her Twitter handle is @heidimdean.
