Guest Post – Facebook: Friend Or Foe

I’m out on vacation this week. The keys to TheKmiecs.com have been turned over to a few, select, awesome guest writers. The following has not been edited by me and is the work and effort of the original author. I appreciate the time and thinking that went into this post and hope you will too. Enjoy!

Here we go again. Facebook’s in the news, and this time, it’s not Multi Level Marketers who are upset because Facebook took down an MLM program that was against their TOS. It’s many, many people, who are reacting to the Terms of Service addendum that now states that Facebook may use your information even after you delete your profile.

In monitoring the twitterverse, I was only half surprised to see the uproar from many many people. I’ve learned not to be surprised about this stuff anymore…it’s kind of like high school in that way..when one person gets upset about something, the whole school can get really out of control. But I am still confused at what the fuss is about? Are we afraid that Facebook is going to sell pictures of future celebrities dancing on a bar in their skivvies, taken when that future celeb was drunk and in college? Are we worried that artists will have their stuff resold after being posted on Facebook? When I asked the question of the twitter world, these are the responses I got. But here’s the thing. Ask Miley Cyrus about photos on social networks coming out into mainstream media. There’s no preventing it! Ask any American Idol prospect who had to take down their Myspace profiles in accordance with Fox– their pics are still found, and broadcast everywhere (remember Antonella Barba, kids? How about Frenchie and her foot fetish). And while artists have a more valid point…photos on social media sites like Facebook are so low resolution (they have to be in order to support the volume of photos on the medium) that they couldn’t REALLY be reprinted and resold. And let’s think about this for a second….do we really think that this is why FB is going in this direction? Once the uproar started, Mark Zuckerberg immediately posted his thoughts as to why the TOS were modified, saying basically that it needs to be this way to protect FB when people post information to one another: “People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them-like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on-to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.” He’s right, of course. They could be better at communicating changes, but hey, we all could be better communicators, right?

Here are my two takeaways:

1. Facebook is not trying to make a buck from your photos. They don’t give a hoot about your song that you’ve posted either. They’re not the devil. They’re a bunch of kids in their early twenties who have stumbled upon a revolution in the way people are connecting. Facebook is NOT a passing phase (at least in my opinion). It’s crossed the tipping point, and they have to be very careful now that 175 MILLION people are on there. They do need to cross every t, dot every i, and have access to everything. While we’re all thinking about our boobie photos, they may be thinking about suicide notes, and pedophilia, and all that stuff. Seriously.
2. For goodness sakes, PLEASE assume that everything you post on the internet might show up on the cover of STAR magazine one day. Okay, maybe not STAR, but assume it may land on the desk of your employer. That’s the safest way to stay happy on the internets.

Carrie Kerpen is a partner @theKbuzz, a Word of Mouth and Social Media Marketing Firm and contributor to BuzzMarketingDaily.com. She is, in fact, admittedly Facebook obsessed. Email her at carrie@thekbuzz.com or follow her on twitter @carriekerpen