Is it Time for Facebook to Make Opt-In the Default?
Facebook’s Open Graph API is getting some negative attention in Washington today. Four democratic U.S. senators, Charles Schumer, Michael Bennet, Mark Begich and Al Franken, sent a letter to Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg earlier this morning, asking for clarification about the privacy implications of Facebook’s latest initiatives. Specifically, these senators complain about the company’s new policy to allow third-party developers to store data for more than 24 hours, Facebook’s Instant Personalization feature and the social network’s new initiatives that make more of its users’ personal information public by default. Sponsor Washington and Facebook Privacy The discussion in Washington mostly centers around the fact that Facebook’s new Instant Personalization service is opt-out . Facebook’s current partners – Microsoft’s Docs.com , Pandora and Yelp – automatically get access to a subset of your personal data whenever you visit their sites while you are logged in to Facebook. According to the senators, Facebook now shares “significant and personal data points that should be kept private unless the user chooses to share them.” U.S. senators : “Significant and personal data points that should be kept private unless the user chooses to share them.” In his response to the senators’ concerns, Facebook’s VP of global communications Elliot Schrage argues that these new products are “designed to enhance personalization and promote social activity across the Internet while continuing to give users unprecedented control over what information they share, when they want to share it, and with whom.” Facebook : We “give users unprecedented control over what information they share, when they want to share it, and with whom.” This discussion comes down to Facebook’s decision to make many of its latest features opt-out instead of opt-in. Currently, Facebook is only testing Instant Personalization with a small number of hand-selected partners. Facebook’s ambition , however, is to turn itself into the hub for personalization on virtually every site on the Internet, so this small group of partners could soon grow exponentially. This – combined with the end of the company’s 24-hour limit on storing data by third-party developers – could potentially pose a serious threat to its users’ privacy. Opt-In vs. Opt-Out There is a reason why Facebook is currently using opt-out as its default. After all, this guarantees Facebook the largest possible user base for these features and the best possible user experience for those who want to use them. Making new features opt-in exposes Facebook to the (very real) possibility that not enough users sign up and that the reach of its current and future initiatives will be very limited. On the other hand, if its users really wanted to these features, wouldn’t they just opt-in if asked? And if these features turn out to be really useful, wouldn’t word about them spread across Facebook like a wildfire? Should Facebook Make Opt-Out Its Default? Given the Beacon fiasco from 2007 – and the recent discussion around how Google handled the launch of Buzz – however, we have to wonder if Facebook simply didn’t learn its own lessons. Facebook already hosts more private information about its users than any other site on the Internet. Given the company’s current trajectory of exposing more and more personal data, it’s probably time for the company to establish a consistent policy for how it plans to handle personal data in the future and make it very easy for users to opt out of any new initiatives that will expose more of a user’s data to third parties in the future. If you want to make sure that Facebook developers can’t access your personal data, here are Sarah Perez’s excellent instructions for how to opt-out . Discuss
Do Kids Read Blogs? New Study Aims to Confuse
A new study released earlier this month seems to contradict findings from Pew Internet Project’s February report on the declining blog authorship and blog readership among the youngest generation of online users. Instead of seeing a downward trend in blogging, the latest research appears, at first glance, to have us questioning those prior reports. According to the latest study, this one from BlogHer and iVillage (red flag?) and co-sponsored by Ketchum and The Nielsen Company , young adults known as “millenials” are the top demographic group in both reading and writing blogs with nearly one-third reporting they read blogs and just over 40% saying they blog themselves. So was the earlier study – the one claiming “kids don’t blog” anymore – wrong? Sponsor Odd Demographics Studied In the new study, the focus was on four age groups: millenials (ages 18-25), Gen X/Y (26-42), Boomers (43-61) and Seniors (62-76). This is a confusing segmentation of demographic groups because they’ve lumped in some of the millenials with the the “Gen X” group to create a hybrid group called “Gen X/Y.” The term “millenials,” however, is often used interchangeably with “Gen Y,” so it’s unclear why they’ve decided to break up that demographic group in this way. To boost Gen X’s numbers, perhaps? We can’t be sure. Ignoring Those Under 18 More importantly, the study simply ignores the youngest generation, the one we like to call “generation I” or the “iGeneration” (you can guess why), which was a major focus of Pew’s study. In fact, Pew’s study showed that only 14% of tweens and teens ages 12 to 17 now report that they blog , down from 25% only four years ago . And only 52% reporting reading and commenting on their friends’ blog, down from over three-quarters back in 2006. In other words, the Internet’s newest users aren’t blogging or all that interested in reading blogs. Instead, they prefer Facebook, said the study. It’s their method of communication between friends and for getting the latest news. Yes, sigh, Facebook is the new Internet. And the social network’s latest moves will only further solidify that position with the launch of the universal “like” button for the entire web, the “instant personalization” provided by websites like Pandora and Yelp (to start), the “sign in with Facebook” boxes that appear on seemingly every site now and so on. How this youngest online generation uses the Internet is an important trend to watch. Although their habits may change over time, it’s worth considering that their general disinterest in sharing their thoughts, feelings, news and ideas via blogging is a trend that will continue as they age. After all, who needs to blog when you have Facebook? BlogHer/iVillage’s Findings For what it’s worth, the BlogHer/iVillage study found that those 18-25 were the group most likely to write or read blogs, with 40.4% reporting the write blogs and 30.3% reporting they read them . The mysterious Gen X/Y group was a close second with 28.1% of the group saying they were blog authors and 29.3% saying they were blog readers. Some of the other numbers are questionable, although we have no way of proving their legitimacy or lack thereof. But really: 12.8% of bloggers are seniors? This is perhaps the most shocking number of them all. Nothing against seniors, of course, but I live in a state filled with them , and I have yet to meet a single senior who even knows what a blog is, much less authors one. At the end of the day, the study’s numbers just feel a little too bullish on this whole blogging thing for my tastes. Plus, there’s little info about the methodology included in the report and, then there’s the fact that BlogHer, a blogging community for women, is, in part, behind the research. The truth of the matter is that neither this latest study nor Pew’s research is likely painting an entirely accurate picture of the blogging landscape. We’ve questioned Pew’s methodology many times in the past and we’re skeptical of positive studies put out by those who would benefit from the news.
What to Do When a PR Disaster Strikes Your Startup
Thursday was a good PR day for the social buying site Blippy . They were featured in two New York Times articles . But Friday wasn’t so great, as the major technology blogs reported that credit card information from its users were found on Google. An hour later, Blippy responded with a post on its blog, explaining that the leak was months old and affected only four beta users, not current Blippy users. Later, they amended the blog post to include an apology. News of more credit card leaks continued on Saturday. Of course, Blippy is by no means the only startups to suffer from potential public relations disasters, and it remains to be seen what, if any, impact this has on the site. Blippy’s response, including the need to re-edit its official announcement, demonstrates the importance in responding quickly and correctly to a crisis. Sponsor As Jacob Morgan writes in a post on “The Social CRM Process,” it’s important to have both a macro and a micro response to this sort of situation, addressing both the individuals involved and the public-at-large. “Remember the whole Southwest Airlines and Kevin Smith debacle, where they kicked him off the flight for being too fat? Southwest Airlines took both a micro and a macro response. They interacted with Kevin Smith directly via Twitter, email, and telephone; a micro response. In addition Southwest Airlines also wrote a public post on their blog which addressed their community as a whole, a macro response.” Some advice: Make a public announcement as soon as possible. Offer full disclosure. Be clear and concise. Say you’re sorry. Of course, sometimes companies opt to do nothing, and hope that the bad press is quickly forgotten. Others hope that it’s true that all publicity is good publicity. Nevertheless it’s best to try to cultivate some good publicity, as trust and credibility are vital for a startup’s success. Transparency and openness are important, even if it means riding out a difficult news cycle. Discuss
Facebook Open Graph: The Definitive Guide For Publishers, Users and Competitors
Facebook just shook the tech world by announcing several major initiatives that collectively constitute an aggressive move to weave the social net on top of the existing Web.The rumors were that the leading social network would launch a “Like” button for the entire Web. Instead, Zuckerberg & Co. unveiled a bold and visionary new platform that cannot be ignored. The bits of this platform bring together the visions of a social, personalized and semantic Web that have been discussed since del.icio.us pioneered Web 2.0 back in 2004. Facebook’s vision is both minimalistic and encompassing – but its ambition is to kill off its competition and use 500 million users to take over entire Web. Sponsor Whether we like it (pun intended) or not, we have to understand what this move means. It impacts users, publishers, competitors and, of course, Facebook itself. In this post, we summarize what Facebook announced and ponder the impact this will have on everyone. Facebook Open Graph: Publisher Plugins The Open Graph is a set combination of publisher plugins, semantic markup and a developer API. “This new API turns Facebook into a read/write storage of user’s tastes.” Login with Faces & Facepile : The simpler publisher plugins enhance Facebook Connect. They makes it easy and compelling to sign in by leveraging Facebook cookies and showing faces of Facebook friends who are already members of the service. Like Button and Like Box : These plugins add the liking feature to any content, typically the whole page. Both can be enhanced with semantic markup, described below. But the very basic intent for these is to get users to Like on the site and post a link to Facebook, which is then permanently stored on a user’s profile and points back to the original site. Activity Feed and Live Stream : These plugins show static and dynamic activity on the site. Activity Feed lists recent likes and comments from the site, while Live Stream shows a real-time view of activity on the site and is intended for interactive events. Recommendations : This plugin surfaces personalized recommendations for the user based on what friends and everyone else is liking on the site. It is intended to drive the users to other pages on the site. Facebook Open Graph: Semantic Markup Facebook announced simple, RDF-based markup to make the plugins smarter. In a nutshell, the markup enables publishers to say what object is on the page – a movie, a book, a recording artist, an event, a sports team, etc. This automatically enables semantics, that is, an understanding that the user is not just interacting with a webpage, but that he or she is liking a specific kind of thing. Semantics then leads to bucketing of the objects into categories like books, movies, music, etc., and gives rise to all sort of applications, including personalized recommendations. Perhaps even more importantly, the markup helps Facebook connect the users across common interests across different websites. For example, if both Pandora and Last.fm annotate a page about The Beatles using Facebook’s markup, then users will be able to see their friends, who like the Beatles across different sites. This is very significant, because the data around friends is sparse and scattered around the sites. Previously, Facebook would surface this data in the stream without persisting it. Now, the information about a friend’s likes of movies, music, books, recording artists, events, sports team, etc. will be permanent on Facebook profiles and readily available in context around the Web. Facebook Open Graph: New API The new Facebook API is elegant and streamlined. It makes it easy to access user information (with permission of course) such as profile, friends, etc. All of the calls are REST based and return JSON objects. For example, my profile information can be fetched like this: http://graph.facebook.com/alexiskold. The authentication is based on OAuth 2.0 protocol and makes it simple not only to connect, but to also prompt for permissions to access user information. This new API turns Facebook into a read/write storage of users’ tastes. And not just one user – all Facebook users . Implications for the Users With this release, Facebook asks users if they are willing to trade off privacy for personalization. To be clear, no personalization is ever possible without users telling a system about their tastes. What Facebook is asking for is necessary in order to then create personalized Web experience. Whether users want this sort of thing is a different question, but assuming that you want to know more about your friends you will. Friends’ interests around entertainment, sports, travel, etc. will be categorized and available. It will be easy to figure out what your friends are into both on Facebook and around the Web. In addition, Facebook is going to be using its own engine to bring you recommendations for related content. This will further accelerate the discovery and cross linking between friends. This will likely further impact the amount of search people do around the Web. As Fred Wilson pointed out – passed links replace search. Yet, the crux of user implications is neither of the above, but one single issue: privacy . It is unclear at this point that this issue is a concern for actual Facebook users, but it is clear that tech world is raising its eyebrows: Marshall Kirkpatrick , Dave Winer , Jeff Jarvis and many others expressed their concerns. People are saying that not only Facebook will know too much about us (because Google is already there today), but that it will be able to control too much. Personally, I am skeptical that the average Facebook user is going to care all that much. People are notoriously naive about being watched on the Web, and this is likely to be no exception. More likely than not, Facebook users will enjoy the personalization aspects of the new platform and won’t think much about it – until Facebook starts openly targeting them. This was not been part of f8 of course, but Facebook is likely to use the information for targeting. After all, advertising is a major part of its monetization already so why won’t it make it even better? If this targeting is too spot on, lots of users will probably get annoyed. Facebook is likely to sooth them via Facebook credits and heavy discounts, negotiated because of their massive volume. How exactly users react remains to be seen, but they will probably like the new Facebook more because of increased relevancy and interaction with friends around the Web. Next page: Implications for Publishers Implications for Publishers On the surface, this Facebook offering is a no-brainer for publishers. Who does not want more social activity on their site? However, in reality this is far from a slam dunk. To understand why, consider two types of sites: sites that are either social networks or have social networking integrated, and the sites that have their own commenting and ratings systems. In the first camp you will find Last.fm, Flixster, Goodreads, etc. None of these sites were a launch partner, understandably so. Social connections around music, movies and books are their bread and butter as are the ratings, reviews and recommendations. If they switch to Facebook for all of this, what do they have left? So any site that already has social networking built in has to decide to abandon that before jumping into the Facebook Open Graph. The even worse problem is the ownership of ratings and comments. Are publishers really ready to give that up? Nobody seriously thinks that users are going to be rating through Facebook and then through the site again. So how is this going to work? It is unclear at this point, but it’s likely publishers will ask for ways to replicate or export comments and likes that users sent to Facebook via their site. Perhaps an open API that allows publishers to manipulate the data is the answer, but it is easy to see how some publishers would be very concerned. “You don’t need to look too closely to see that Facebook is creating a feedback loop, which includes it, users and the rest of the Web and excludes its competitors.” However, if you run a website like eCommerce or a blog or a service like Pandora that currently does not have a lot of social built-in, this offering is a no-brainer as it will instantly start recycling your pages through the massive Facebook power of passed links. Implications for Competitors This is aggressive and brilliant move by Facebook – and Twitter, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, AOL, eBay, Amazon and others, except for Microsoft, should be really worried. It appears that Microsoft is content with just partnering with Facebook, perhaps rightly so. Possibly a Bing deal is in the works, which would make a lot of sense. For all other players on the Web, the worry is that Facebook is trying to close the loop in exclusively owning user eyeballs. Apparently Facebook is not content with just connecting people; it wants to connect people and things. And not only that, it wants to do it around the Web. And not just any people – friends. You don’t need to look too closely to see that Facebook is creating a feedback loop, which includes it, users and the rest of the Web and excludes its competitors. There are several things that other big players might try to do, the worst of which is to try to mimic Facebook. The “me too” that we’ve seen way too many times recently has not worked, and will not work now. The second best choice is to try to block it. As strange as it sounds it might just work. Between publisher and user issues there are a lot of concerns, and a carefully orchestrated and coordinated campaign may seriously hurt this initiative. Remember, Beacon was brought down fairly quickly by a combination of user backlash and derogatory press. The third option – to embrace and extend this platform, to innovate on top of it – is likely to be the best move. Innovation has always trumped stagnation on the Web. The problem is that it might not be that easy to embrace this initiative. After all, it does not look like Facebook asked everyone to gather around the table and cooperate on this. It might not be open to cooperation, but if it is then this is the way forward. Technically speaking, what Facebook has done is elegant and correct. From markup, to plugins, to API, all of it is modern and awesome. The missing bit is that Facebook appears to be the only repository of data in this equation – and that makes the whole offering seriously closed. Publishers and users don’t have a choice as to where to store the data. It is going to Facebook and Facebook alone. Perhaps there is a way to rework the system in a way that fixes that. We will look forward to see how this unfolds. Implications for Facebook Clearly this announcement is yet another turning point for Facebook. Before the conference Facebook was the biggest social network on the planet. If its vision actually happens, Facebook will be the biggest network of people and things on the planet- or to put it differently, it will be the taste graph of the planet. Obviously there is a different technology that Facebook will need to be building. It already perfected the social networking part, but semantic analysis, recommendation systems, vertical categories like movies and books, as well as having completely open read/write storage of tastes is completely new to the team. The biggest challenge that Facebook will face is to inject, re-deliver and most importantly make use of the data that is flowing into it. Facebook will be doing some serious number crunching and UI revamps to prepare for this next phase of its life. But perhaps the biggest experiment and test will be delivering relevancy. Google succeed with this in search; Facebook will now have the challenge to bring relevancy to the recommendations and taste-based advertising arena. Next page: Implications For the Semantic Web Implications For the Semantic Web One of the most exciting parts of the Facebook announcement to me personally is the possible breakthrough in semanticizing the Web. We’ve written previously about the Semantic Web here , and it has been a personal passion of mine. What Facebook has done has a chance to make vast parts of the consumer Web including movies, books, music, events, sports, and news semantically tagged. Publishers and websites finally have a strong incentive to mark things up and get return traffic from Facebook. “This is a great chance for the Semantic Web to finally hit consumer verticals and become real.” The actual protocol that Facebook suggested is very simple. To describe the object on the page, the site owner needs to specify the title, type of the object, image, url and the name of the site using simple meta tags. The format is extensible and additional tags can be added. For example, for a book a site can add an isbn number. This format leaves room for ambiguity. The goal of classic semantic markups traditionally has been to refer to entities precisely; for example adding the director to a movie, or a year to remakes. The Facebook protocol does not seem to have this. There were lots of previous efforts to markup the Web. To name a few, RDF , microformats , Google Rich Snippets , Yahoo’s Search Monkey (based on RDF and microformats), and lastly, abmeta , which was developed by me with help from Peter Mika at Yahoo. Of all these formats, Facebook’s is most similar to abmeta because the markup is placed into meta tags, and is simple and human readable. This simplicity is the key to broad adoption. So all around, this is a great chance for the Semantic Web to finally hit consumer verticals and become real. Implications for Developers Every new rich platform that has been rolled out in the past couple of years presented a big opportunity for developers and this one will be no exception. While we do not know exactly what sort of applications will be build on top of new Facebook, we know that they will be very powerful. This platform has the potential to give rise to to new kind of personalization and attention economy that people have been talking about for years. It has of course, a chance to majorly backfire, but I am optimistic. This will be a gold rush for application that is likely to last for at least a year, like the last one did. It’s too early to tell whether this will be a platform that survives and does not hurt is participants. However, it is very likely that the best applications built on this platform will be owned by Facebook. Still, there is a huge new opportunity here for developers and the sky is the limit. Checkmate? Facebook made a major chess move. It might have checkmated its competitors, or perhaps it might have to lose another piece like it lost Beacon. Whichever is the case, right now there are deep implications for Facebook and its competitors, publishers, users and the Web at large. What Facebook has announced cannot be ignored and can not be undone. Everyone needs to figure out the next steps and understand what to do. Time will tell where we land, but my gut is that positive things will come out of this. If nothing else, let’s give Facebook credit for innovation and re-imagination the Web. Discuss
Why Newspapers Need to Heed Facebook, Now
Given Mark Zuckerberg’s announcements at the Facebook F8 conference , one thing is certain: newspapers can no longer ignore Facebook’s impact and reach. Whereas publishers continue to scapegoat Google for many of their current troubles, they should be equally, if not more, wary of Facebook. Whether they acknowledge it or not, newspapers are losing out to the social networking site on the fundamental fronts of community relevance, attention and information dissemination. Yet behind the perceived threat from Facebook, there is also a new opportunity for publications to achieve newfound audience relevance. Sponsor Guest author Chris Treadaway ( @ctreada ) is founder and CEO of Lasso , and author of the upcoming book Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day, an imprint of Sybex. He blogs at treadaway.typepad.com . Facebook’s rise to dominance has been astounding. It is currently the most visited site in the United States, and boasts 400-plus million worldwide users. We’ve seen it go from a dorm room distraction to now being larger than the combined population of the United States and Mexico. With the social network claiming that roughly 70% of its user base is outside the United States, that means that there are at least 120 million Americans on Facebook today. Taken down to the local level, though, this means that Facebook might just already have more reach in the community than any other media outlet – especially local newspapers. With the unveiling of their Web-ubiquitous “Like” button and “social bar,” as well as their Graph API, Facebook is now using its strengths to redefine how we interact with the Web in its entirety. So what does all of this mean for the publishing industry and for newspapers in particular? A few very important things: Facebook is now a legitimate threat to Google. It has accomplished this by changing the game from search discoverability to social context, which wasn’t doable with 40 million users but is with 400-plus million users. Facebook is trying to become the first place people visit when logging into their computers every morning. The site that leads this battle carries the most online leverage, at least until it is knocked off the pedestal. Facebook is attempting to become pervasive across the entire Web, and without permission. Like it or not, site owners are going to have to deal with social media, but now in a much more pervasive way than ever before. Facebook is a competitor for the attention of local audiences. One minute spent on Facebook is a minute not spent on another Web property. Facebook will become a more interesting place as it aggregates data on what people are doing and how they are reacting to the Web as a whole, not just Facebook’s network. So it isn’t just necessary for media outlets to build a better Web sites anymore – they have to build engaging content that can appear on Facebook and drive value to their paper. It isn’t impossible, but it has to be a priority. All of these things impact discoverability of a newspaper’s content, who monetizes it and how. Those that succeed in becoming a viral Facebook content commodity will grow rapidly. Likewise, the decline of those news sources that fail to realize the necessary potential of Facebook will be swift. A deep and complete understanding of social media is necessary for publishers of any kind to modernize, grow and ultimately survive. It’s becoming a necessary core competency, and fast. Yesterday, The Washington Post announced their “Network News” initiative, integrating Facebook into the paper’s website. The Post’s incorporation of activity from users’ Facebook friends immediately creates a value of social relevance that trumps efforts like the New York Times’ similar, though detrimentally insular, TimesPeople network . More importantly, however, are the possibilities such integration might provide for local newspapers. Relevance is a central theme to both the content shared on social networks and the community publication. Facebook offers those newspapers a readymade audience that is already connected to their desired local demographic. Local publications need to recognize the importance of tapping into Facebook’s community, because, first and foremost, it is precisely where their readers are finding, sharing and discussing the types of pertinent content that the papers seek to champion. Newspapers no longer need traditional Web developers. Papers now need Facebook developers, experts who can partner with creative social-savvy businesspeople who know how to take advantage of the social graph. In the wake of Facebook’s new features, it will not be long before newspaper and media executives are attacking and blaming Facebook for their problems in the way they do Google today. However, those publications that more progressively pursue the opportunities and value opened to them by Facebook’s new tools will have a very different reaction. Photo by Michael Rogers . Discuss