Does the Privacy Conversation Exist In a Bubble?
I got pretty excited about watching some liveblogging of the Facebook privacy announcement a few weeks back (I watched via Read Write Web’s use of a cool new tool called Unawave). I told a friend about this over lunch last week, and she laughed at me. I get this often, as I’m always trying to discuss the intricacies of social networks and online human interaction. My friends humor me, briefly, then make it clear that it’s time to move on.
Perhaps We Are The Others
Key takeaway here? They don’t care. I have a lot of friends in education, consulting, finance and various non-profit work and, thus, I have very few friends who interact with social media for business purposes. What I’ve found is that, while these people may have updated their privacy settings in the last few months (as have the majority of users), they are largely unconcerned. While they may check Facebook multiple times a day, they see the service as a positive fun-only experience. Those of us in marketing, social media, and tech see it as a something much greater and, therefore, believe that changes in privacy have far more impact on our own lives.
Case and point: My social media self's finely-tuned privacy settings.
Check out the stats from this poll on people’s opinions on internet privacy. It showed that people were neatly divided, with 45.96% feeling the right to privacy should be absolute and 42.28% thinking that privacy is our responsibility, not our right. I would love to take a similar poll and break it down by profession, and then perhaps by hours spent on social media tools.
In The Words of Garth Algar, “We Fear Change”
David Armano, via the Harvard Business Review blog, points out that Facebook isn’t about privacy anyway; it’s about agility. The site was created to rapidly adapt and always entice, and it does that well. Quit Facebook Day was a failure, partially driven by the fact that it was on a national holiday, but partially because a majority of people can’t be bothered. Facebook works for them. As it is our job in social media and marketing to scrutinize Facebook’s every move, these changes create a flurry of posts, Tweets and heated debate. For everyone else? Facebook changes, a few people complain, we all adapt, the change becomes a part of our life, the cycle starts over. And really, let’s be honest: how else would you know when to send birthday ecards?
I don’t want to downplay the importance maintaining a transparent privacy policy; I think Facebook has learned their lesson on that one. However, I do think it’s worth remembering the view of life from outside the social media bubble, how fast Facebook evolves, and how quick we are to forgive and forget.
runquatro:
BrandonSings:
JamesOClark:
MattAt214:
LibbyMyers44:
ElyseHeslin:
Room_214:
peterahall:
jo_rogel:
JasonCormier:
on Jun 13, 2010
This is a good information. I would like to invite you for an interview with Mr. Marketology. The Mr. Marketology concept evolved out of the desire to provide greater cross industry promotion as well as educational materials. You can visit our website Mr. Marketology or you can email me at annie.love@mrmarketology.com