Do social network sites genuinely care about privacy? (Guardian)
Newly asked questions
Do social network sites genuinely care about privacy?
Charles Arthur
The Guardian
Thursday September 13 2007
Very deeply, because it's only by guarding it jealously and parcelling it up and then selling it to someone else that they can make any money. Why, did you think that hosting websites with millions of users was something they did for fun? Not at all - there are hefty hosting bills to pay but, more importantly, big profits potentially to be made.
Thus this season's poster child for social networking, Facebook, announced on its blog that in a few weeks, it will make parts of its 40 million users' details, such as their names and pictures, available to the major search engines - Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live - and so visible to anyone online.
Why? Simple: money. Facebook can sell you, and the rest of the 60 million users it anticipates it will have by the end of this year to the companies that buy advertising space. "We honestly believe if we make advertising more compelling and more socially relevant, we can have significantly less but have it being more valuable," said Chamath Palihapitiya, vice-president of product marketing and operations in London this week. "We have an incredible number of page views and could become the most high-traffic sites in the world. The thing is not to have as many ads as possible but to make them as essential and necessary as possible. And then it is not viewed as advertising, but as content."
Quite how many people will tweak their Facebook profiles to keep them hidden from the search engines' eyes remains to be seen - but its founder Mark Zuckerberg has done well so far on people being prepared to be found by would-be (or real) friends. Now, all the advertisers in the world will want to be your best friends forever too.
But a raw example of quite how much - or little - your data matters to some sites came last week when people began getting emails, apparently from friends, inviting them to join Quechup, a rapidly growing social networking site.
The reason for its growth soon became clear: when people signed up it would grab their emails and send out invites in their names, but without their explicit permission. Nine of the top 10 Google searches for "quechup" now include people complaining of this. The company has not posted any retraction, but does seem to have stopped the practice.
Meanwhile, its privacy policy states that during online registration it "gathers email, gender, date of birth, country, post code/zip code and marital status. This information is used to allow us to provide services and features that most likely meet your needs ..."
Perhaps it should have mentioned that the feature it thought you'd find most useful was your friends, encouraged to join via spam. Well, how else do you build a network?
Do social network sites genuinely care about privacy?
Charles Arthur
The Guardian
Thursday September 13 2007
Very deeply, because it's only by guarding it jealously and parcelling it up and then selling it to someone else that they can make any money. Why, did you think that hosting websites with millions of users was something they did for fun? Not at all - there are hefty hosting bills to pay but, more importantly, big profits potentially to be made.
Thus this season's poster child for social networking, Facebook, announced on its blog that in a few weeks, it will make parts of its 40 million users' details, such as their names and pictures, available to the major search engines - Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live - and so visible to anyone online.
Why? Simple: money. Facebook can sell you, and the rest of the 60 million users it anticipates it will have by the end of this year to the companies that buy advertising space. "We honestly believe if we make advertising more compelling and more socially relevant, we can have significantly less but have it being more valuable," said Chamath Palihapitiya, vice-president of product marketing and operations in London this week. "We have an incredible number of page views and could become the most high-traffic sites in the world. The thing is not to have as many ads as possible but to make them as essential and necessary as possible. And then it is not viewed as advertising, but as content."
Quite how many people will tweak their Facebook profiles to keep them hidden from the search engines' eyes remains to be seen - but its founder Mark Zuckerberg has done well so far on people being prepared to be found by would-be (or real) friends. Now, all the advertisers in the world will want to be your best friends forever too.
But a raw example of quite how much - or little - your data matters to some sites came last week when people began getting emails, apparently from friends, inviting them to join Quechup, a rapidly growing social networking site.
The reason for its growth soon became clear: when people signed up it would grab their emails and send out invites in their names, but without their explicit permission. Nine of the top 10 Google searches for "quechup" now include people complaining of this. The company has not posted any retraction, but does seem to have stopped the practice.
Meanwhile, its privacy policy states that during online registration it "gathers email, gender, date of birth, country, post code/zip code and marital status. This information is used to allow us to provide services and features that most likely meet your needs ..."
Perhaps it should have mentioned that the feature it thought you'd find most useful was your friends, encouraged to join via spam. Well, how else do you build a network?
posted by eppi at
11:34 AM
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