30,000+ Users Join the Quit Facebook Campaign
31st May was ‘Quit Facebook Day‘. Over 33,000 users quit the social networking service. But why, and is it something that Facebook, and more to the point, Facebook advertisers, should be worrying about?
The answer to the ‘why’ question can be summed up in one word ‘privacy’. Facebook has been making changes over recent months that have been designed to make more of its users’ data public.
For example, in December default settings were reset so that much of users’ information – including status updates and photos – would become public. Although Facebook asked users to approve these changes via a dialogue box, by far the easiest option for the bambozzled user was to simply agree to the changes rather than access a range of options to customize their privacy settings.
More changes followed in April, including make users’ ‘Likes and Interests’ publicly available. And of course the launch of the ‘Open Social Graph’ in the same month allowed developers access to ‘public’ information without the specific approval of users. For some, including Matthew Milan and Joseph Dee, organisers of ‘Quit Facebook Day’, the service had gone too far and needed to be taught a lesson. And ‘Quit Facebook’ day was just the tangible tip of a negative publicity iceberg that saw Facebook on the cover of Time magazine and US legislators taking a keener interest in their privacy practices.
As a result, Facebook decided to react. On 26th May, a simplified privacy dashboard was launched- significantly reducing the number of clicks required to customise a user’s privacy settings. In addition, Facebook introduced their own ‘Facebook Privacy’ fan page to explain the changes and answer questions. However, the changes have still come in for criticism as some controls, such as the ability to keep data private from 3rd party applications and websites, is still too difficult to access.
So why is Facebook pushing the boundaries on privacy and what are the implications of this latest spat?
Facebook’s management argue that the more user information is made public, the more users will be able to find people to connect with – not just friends and friends of friends but people that share an interest or live in the same neighbourhood. The more friends people make, the better place the world becomes.
That’s all very altruistic and believable but clearly there are business imperatives at play here as well. The more information that users share, the more data that Facebook collects, so it can target campaigns better for advertisers, be it via their existing ‘on site’ advertising service, or the new advertising network that it’s open graph project will help it to create.
Facebook also has the problem that people have signed up to rivals such as Twitter and Foursquare because their utility is primarily focused around their ‘open-ness’ – making new connections, engaging in new conversations or competing with rival players. Facebook’s users are more often looking to keep in touch with existing networks of friends past and present, so privacy is more of an issue. In addition, Facebook is a much larger player than either of these rivals, which makes it a more visible target for the media and regulators.
Although most users clearly value the service’s utility over any privacy issues, as its continued growth demonstrates, the problem for Facebook is that more users will now be aware of the privacy issues than before. For premium and luxury advertisers, it could be argued that their more sophisticated and tech savvy customers are more likely to be aware and up to the challenge of navigating Facebook’s privacy options menu and opting out, making targeting more difficult.
The problem is a small one at present – 33,000 users does not a revolution make – but if public or government pressure forces Facebook to make the process of ‘opting out’ of public data sharing even easier, or insists on ‘opting in’ being the new default, Facebook’s plans to create the ’social web’ and monetize its consequences could suffer a serious setback.
