[governance] Has Facebook just unfriended its users? [new Graph Search #Joe Privacy]

Wed Jan 16 16:16:22 EST 2013

Interesting article on the news today, see below:
Has Facebook just unfriended its users?
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Facebook spooked many of its users within minutes of its “major”
announcement yesterday of the company’s new Graph Search, which will
delight advertisers but risk scaring the hell out of Joe Public. Guy
Daniels reports.

 Facebook needed to do something. It was facing increasing criticism that
it was no longer cool, whilst also trying to appease shareholders post-IPO
over its revenue generating potential. And so it made its move. Could it
satisfy both camps – its users and its shareholders?

  The answer appears to be “no”.

  During a press event yesterday evening, which (based on the countless
live tweets and blogs) veered from baffling to incredulous and then to
underwhelming, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage to inject
some coolness back into the social networking site. His definition of cool:
graphs. That’s right, graphs. Social graphs to be precise, which were
lapped upped by the math nerds who instantly understood the power of this
new search tool – it’s not web search, it’s Graph Search. It’s like a
gigantic SQL query right there in your Facebook page. Orgasmic!

But hang on, this ability to search and filter your friends likes, photos,
locations, timeline – heck, entire social history – is a little bit
intrusive, isn’t it? It certainly is, but Facebook was at pains to
highlight that only information that you share with your friends will be
included in searches. Still, best to check your privacy settings just in
case…

Of course, you and I won’t be the only ones using the social graph for
filtering our connections – it will also be used by advertisers to hit us
with extremely targeted advertising. It’s an incredibly powerful, and
potentially lucrative, tool. But will Facebook users really want
multi-national corporations knowing so much about you? The only way to
truly prevent this is to close your account and go elsewhere, which is too
much of a doomsday option for most users – for now. At least, that will be
what Facebook is hoping. There’s no point having the world’s most powerful
ad service if there’s no-one left to reach.

There’s also not much point having this advanced functionality if users
only spend part of their time on Facebook. What’s needed is for them to
spend 100 per cent of their time on the site. Everything they do, from
messaging to photo sharing, and even browsing, must be done on Facebook for
this to truly be effective. Yes, I added browsing. This after all was one
of the identified areas that Facebook needed to address if it was to
compete better with Google, and now they have finally done it – sort of.
Facebook was signed a deal with Microsoft to add its Bing search engine to
the site.

This was Zuckerberg’s attempt to steal Steve Job’s “one more thing” moment
away from Apple – as towards the end of the press conference he uttered
that famous phrase and the fans went wild with expectation. Could it be the
Facebook Phone? Don’t be silly, it was only Bing. And great as Bing is, a
partnership announcement is simply not cool. Zuckerberg is many things, but
he is not the heir to Steve Jobs.

As for those wild predictions about a Facebook phone – baseless. Zuckerberg
had gone on record to say there wouldn’t be one. Do analysts really believe
there is room in the market for another phone OS? Certainly not one that
could hope to challenge Apple and Google in the short term.
It’s not happening, Facebook didn’t make a hardware announcement, so get
over it.

Richard Windsor was one of the few analysts to guess right, commenting on
his blog before the launch that:

“Whatever Facebook announces today, the chances are that most commentators
will get the wrong end of the stick. I do not believe for a second that
Facebook wants to be like Apple. Instead I think this is about directing
and keeping internet traffic for the benefit of its ability to sell
targeted advertising.”

Despite yesterday’s announcement, Facebook remains uncool to many of its
users, especially the influential ones. They will no doubt have uttered a
socially-correct “Meh” at the news. But does it matter? Even if Facebook
doesn’t grow any larger than its current billion-strong community of active
users. Even if many of its users wise up to the privacy issues and start
purging old timeline data, or refuse to relax their privacy settings, does
it matter? Facebook can start to capitalise financially on those who
remain, and that’s still a huge community of users. Make cash while you
can? It badly needs to improve on last year’s $4.2bn of revenues.

The markets didn’t appear that impressed though, closing after hours
trading down 2.7 per cent at $30.10 (remember, it opened back in May at a
disappointing $38.23). Looks like the recent uptick since Christmas has
come to an end.

Here is how Zuckerberg described social graph during the event:

“This is one of the neatest things we've done in awhile. Graph Search is a
completely new way to search for information.”

He added that: “it’s going to take years and years to index the whole
Graph,” and that there would be a limited beta launch now, rolling out
slowly in the months to come. He also very briefly touched on mobile, but
only in the sense that social graph needs to expand from its English-only
and website-only launch:

“In the future there are obvious things we need to get to, like mobile.”

Bottom line of all this – is this the right way for Facebook to encourage
its users to increase its use of the site, by searching and divulging more
information? The more they use the site, the more the social graph will
learn about them and their habits, and the more the results of Graph Search
will appeal to advertisers. So Google.

If it can persuade its users that there are no privacy concerns, then maybe
it will succeed. Does it have to be “cool”? Google isn’t all that cool
(Google+ anyone?), but that doesn’t bother it. Cool is over-rated – but try
telling that to a teenager. And there’s the rub – Facebook still thinks it
needs to be cool and appealing to teens. If this target group starts to
think it’s being exploited, then that’s not cool and they will walk away
from the service. In attempting to encourage (force?) its users to do more
on the site (“more” being activity that is advertiser-friendly of course),
Facebook risks shooting itself in the foot. This could backfire badly. Time
to unfriend.

Source:
http://www.telecomtv.com/comspace_newsDetail.aspx?n=49873&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10&utm_campaign=DailyNews160113HasFBJustUnfriended&utm_medium=email&utm_source=TTV-Daily-News-Alert

-- 
Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro aka Sala
P.O. Box 17862
Suva
Fiji

Twitter: @SalanietaT
Skype:Salanieta.Tamanikaiwaimaro
Tel: +679 3544828
Fiji Cell: +679 998 2851
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