I can understand Facebook’s problems with getting it right. The site has to use the capital in user generated content more and more. With it’s largest revenue stream still advertising, it needs to keep people engaged with the site. So their problem is finding the sweet spot between privacy and having enough interesting content to promote the site.

The question is, what is driving it? Making sure user’s have a safe, engaging time on the site or trying to keep the momentum of growth. “Giving users control” of their privacy settings seems to be a way to pass the buck and avoid finding that sweet spot. Most users will ignore it or not understand it, leaving their information in the public domain.

I think this is a thinly veiled attempt to brush over the privacy issue and utilise the biggest USP they have, their users’ content.

Now the basic premise of social networking is to allow this kind of interaction to build a “social network”, so I was faced with the problem of explaining this to people that didn’t quite understand how all of this fits into a data protection policy. Their default policy strictly prohibits the sharing of that kind of information and wanted the message removing. As far as I can tell there is no way to change that message.

So the problem is how does all this work together? The answer is quite straightforward. Facebook have gone to great lengths to protect their users data. There are policies in place to legally restrict what users can do, there is a developer policy as well. The API itself controls and prevents certain functions to allow the social interactions without allowing the application to abuse them. They even have a team that has to approve applications before they can be publicly available through Facebook.

They also have built a lot of functionality into Facebook to empower users with the ability to control their own privacy settings. One of these to control who has access to friends information. Every Facebook user has these settings and can control how their information is used. The code within the API takes these settings into consideration when performing operations with third party applications.

So the answer is clear. Don’t over complicate data protection policies within a social networking environment. Gone are the days when they had privacy issues. Facebook has, very publicly, built a great suite of tools and policies to protect their users. Don’t force users to adhere to another data protection policy when they themselves have the power to control their own. If user education is a concern, then add instructions on how a user can go about changing their privacy settings.

Too much policy control will cause problems with the evolving Internet. Don’t get me wrong, privacy and data protection are probably the biggest concern on the Internet, and life in general, today. But put in usable policies, work with the tools available and empower the user. That way, a balance can be made and the evolving web can keep moving forward.

Let’s take the latter to start with, media buzz. Every time they change their homepage everyone hates it. They go from something that works and people are used to to a complete change. This also appears to gradually hide more and more functionality. So everybody hates it and complains, blogs, sets up Facebook groups devoted to going back to the original, etc. This generates a lot of buzz, particulary with the mainstream media that pick up on the story, more people join Facebook, and so on. So they get a lot more users. Although I would be interested to see the actual figures.

Ok, now to the other reason, keeping it fresh. And the simple answer to this is a question, “What else can they do?”. They offer a very comprehensive suite of core functionality that simply just works. Everyone can understand it and use it effectively. That is part of their success and the main reason for continued use. They’ve also opened the platform to third party developers who can build anything they like within the policies. And when you’ve got millions of developers producing applications, it becomes very difficult to offer anything that they have not already done. It also means that it is pretty much impossible to compete with that number of developers, preventing Facebook themselves from “doing it better”.

I was talking this through with Phil Peace who raised the question why the ads were so bad on Facebook. Which is true. He said with a ga-zillion users you’d think they’d have better quality ads instead of “get rich quick” and “local girls in your area” type ads. Which if you take the other points I’ve mentioned into account produces a simple answer. It’s pretty much their only revenue stream.

The users on Facebook don’t pay for the service, applications are free to install and use, there is just the ads. And with an open platform for development and thousands of free add-ons it makes it virtually impossible to monetise the platform further. For instance, you can’t offer a premium service.

So with a ga-zillion users you need a ga-zillion ads to keep people clicking links. And that means you need all the ads you can get. To keep people interested and clicking, you need to keep it fresh.