The blogosphere is abuzz with news of public Facebook profiles, but what gives? This is old news. In June I wrote about the topic:
Sometime in the past few weeks, Facebook began exposing profiles to be indexed by Google (A search today returns over 350,000 profiles). Granted, profiles are still private, but how will people feel about their profile being indexed in Google? At the same time, there seems to be no way to turn this functionality off, and Facebook help documents have no mention of this new “feature.”
These types of context-leaps have caused problems for Facebook in the past. When newsfeeds were turned on with no privacy, Facebook failed to understand that privacy was both quantitative and qualitative. A context jump from “searchable within Facebook” to “searchable in Google” is a big deal. The fact Facebook was not upfront with its users in saying “we’re going to be letting Google in to index our userbase” is troubling. Even more troubling is the seeming inability to opt in or out of this service. I’d rethink this approach.
Granted, Facebook did rethink the approach (my 350k indexed search string now returns 50 results), and kudos to them for doing so. But let’s be clear, this isn’t new. The A-list just wasn’t paying attention. ;)
Fred Stutzman is a doctoral student, researcher and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science. He studies how people use social media.
I don’t think it’s a big deal for search: after all, isn’t “everything” and “everyone” (at least, most photos) already on Facebook?
However, it’s context-relevant. Not because things will have to change, but because Facebook tells to people something they understand: you can be found through Google & the little box in the corner, or just the little box — but they drive them to the Privacy option page, with a grasp on the challenge. This means they can teach more people how important are these features; I am tempted to believe any problem is solvable through this page. . .
Agreed. I don’t really see why it is a big deal either. It was a big deal when FB leaked your profile w/o telling you, but this is sort of a news non-starter. Perhaps proof that anything FB enters the echochamber easily these days.
They also talk about FB outcompeting the identity aggregator sites (Spock, etc). Those sites are so not in Facebook’s league – comparing them is like comparing a tee ball team against the Yankees.
Yes, I think both sides are a big deal. I put things on Facebook in part precisely because they aren’t world-searchable and cached forever.
I don’t put highly private things like bank account numbers and am well aware that it is a relatively public forum, but I do expect Facebook to keep things within the walled garden.
Also, for people who have a personal site and a Facebook site, Facebook should not compete with their personal site’s ranking.
I understand the trepidation on the part of facebook users but I wonder if it’s not a bit thick headed. Let’s remember that facebook is part of the internet and the internet’s primary function is to make data accessible.
In the early days of mass internet usage, back when AOL was all the rage and the world hadn’t even heard of in home broadband, it was axiomatic that one did not put anything on the internet that they didn’t want seen by basically the whole world.
Did this attitude change because, if it did, I think a lot of people are deluding themselves.
I think the sudden “discovery” of this is due to the announcements that showed up on FB login pages this week with links to where you could tweak privacy settings.