Facebook Afraid Protecting Users Will Hurt Relationship With Google?
Posted on by Ryan Deiss in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media
Facebook’s privacy woes have been widespread, reported, spun and un-spun to the point where it’s become the ‘Gulf oil-spill’ of the social media world. We know our info is being leaked because someone got greedy, and we know there is a way to fix it but it nothing seems to be happening.
The truth is, in the end, people don’t like the fact that their personal information isn’t safe, but they aren’t going to do anything about it except stay put and keep their account activity in motion. This is an obvious conclusion seeing that Facebook recently hit the 500 million user milestone.
Adding insult to injury, a ‘jedi’ developer for Nmap Security scanner created a program that broke into 100 million Facebook users and leaked their information for anyone to download. That’s 20% of Facebook!
Funny thing is, a list of the major companies that downloaded it was released containing AT&T, Novell, Viacom, Wells Fargo, and oddly enough the Church of Scientology.
But once again, Facebook has had holes poked all through its thin shell. This time around it’s not as detrimental because, of course, they were taken advantage of. The thing that’s hurting Facebook is the fact that there is something that could be done, but they aren’t willing to do it.
Facebook could up their security features to protect their precious users, but doing so could hurt their relationship with Google and the other big SE’s. Allowing Google to crawl all over Facebook makes Facebook more and more an integral part of online personal data.
So for now, it appears that keeping leverage with Google is more important than protecting the people that make what they do possible.
I’m not leaving Facebook, and I think the pros vastly outweigh the cons of security issues, but do you think Facebook should be sacrificing more for us? Or would sacrificing for our privacy make Facebook a less effective place for us marketers?
Comment Below and share your thoughts!
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Kenneth Holland
03. Aug, 2010
Sure, they should be doing more privacy-wise. But now that they’re the 8 million pound Gorilla they don’t care. Their attitude is ‘we’ll do what we want so stuff it’. Of course they won’t say this publicly. They try to act concerned but the bottom line is they’re going to shave it as close as they can without getting into Federal trouble to meet their business goals. Has anyone ever met a FB employee? They make a Google staffer seem like Mother Teresa!!
Ryan Deiss
03. Aug, 2010
I haven’t met a FB employee, but I can only imagine
… Are you sticking with FB regardless?
Kenneth Holland
03. Aug, 2010
@Ryan Deiss, I only use them (at this point) for personal reasons. I haven’t done any advertising, business building, etc…as of yet. But yes, I’ll still use them.