Here & There Column 11-29-11

Trusting Facebook ?

If you want to talk about something that can consume a lot of your time (and many consider it wasted time) then Facebook certainly can fit right at the top of the list.
I use it to keep track of folks and we also use it for our columns.
Other folks use it to tell you their daily life story....when they go to bed, when they get up, where they have been, where they are going, etc, etc,
Wow.....privacy certainly it not a part of Facebook and some of the language we see on these pages just does not belong there.
So many users of Facebook say they don not trust Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook's real customers are not its 800 million free users but the companies who actually pay for our data which for some includes everything about us.
Now one can only guess that Zuckerberg gives a hoot about privacy guarantees because the only thing we will get is an illusion of privacy.
Just look at what this network recently performed as they gave users a big redesign of its interface that only encourages us users to divulge more about our lives.
Zuckerberg notes that the new sharing functions will help tell the story of our lives letting users tell their friends what they're reading, watching, hearing, eating and consuming.
Now the major reason Facebook wants us to do this is so they can use it to sell more fine-tuned advertising.
For those who are not aware Facebook has formed partnerships with Spotify, Netflix and Yahoo, companies that distribute music, movies and news.
Facebook's popularity works because folks like you and I want to connect in more meaningful ways with the people we know and they keep pushing us to make more of our private lives public.
We think there should be privacy guarantees and we are always telling folks close to us they should be careful what they put on Facebook.