Amidst a torrent of complaints, Facebook has held two meetings to discuss privacy policy decisions. Still, Facebook users continue to blast Zuckerberg’s unwillingness to address these issues directly with them. Today, however, the public was given two opportunities to hear from the Facebook team. The Washington Post published a letter from Facebook that acknowledges the complaints and makes promises to change the way privacy is controlled by the user on the social networking site. In a much more intimate email correspondence with a blogger, the Facebook CEO admits making “a bunch of mistakes.”
Still, for many this latest round of privacy concerns marks the inevitable end of a strong run for the social media giant. Facebook defiantly continues to stick by its mantra of an open internet of sharing, however, alienating its 400 million users from the discussion. As a result, many are leaving. One popular earlier adopter even went as far as to publicly delete his account on Ustream offering this explanation to his fans:
Simply put, I no longer trust Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg with my information.
Additionally, Facebook has become a waste of time for me. Every minute
I put into Facebook is a minute I will never get back. It’s time I
could have spent writing one of these emails to you guys, finding new
startups to invest in, working on Mahalo.com (almost profitable!) or
spending time with my family.Facebook is a Ponzi scheme run by a very bad actor. The best way to
express our discontent with Mark Zuckerberg is to simply walk away.
But is this act of protest really necessary? After all, this same upset user has amassed nearly 100,000 followers on Twitter, an extremely public social networking site that makes no effort to deny the fact that not only are a user’s tweets broadcast to the world, but they are also saved to the Library of Congress! Should we just embrace the openness of the internet landscape in this web 2.0 world? Or should we continue to fight for that one piece of real estate over at Facebook.com that, at one time, offered a closed network on which friends could communicate privately? It seems that people aren’t quite ready to go completely public.
