so no surprise, my Beacon post yesterday struck a nerve with a lot of people.
many strong reactions, some in agreement... lots of others not. in particular, a few folks i respect quite a bit (Nelson Minar, Fred Wilson, Om Malik) took positions quite contrary to mine. altho i still feel strongly that Beacon is a pretty innovative concept & has a lot of interesting potential, i'm going to take a step back on this for a bit & re-think my perspective.
a few quick items:
1) perhaps i'm overestimating the level of comfort / awareness most Facebook users have with sharing information on an opt-out basis. i'm going to talk to more people about this & see what they think.
2) Om's "mea culpa not enough" and Dare Obasanjo's "beacon is unfixable" are both worth reading. i'm not sure if Dare's technical / legal assessment is correct, but if so then Om's right this may still not be over.
3) Nelson took me out to the "do no evil" shed, pulled down my "opt-out isn't a sin" pants, and gave me a good old-fashioned "higher moral ground" ass-whipping with this comment:
But I couldn't disagree with you more when you say "so if you're Facebook the real question is: do you want 90% of your users to use Beacon, or 90% of your users to NOT use Beacon?".
The real question should be do 90% of your users want to use Beacon?
touche, nelson. that one really made me pause & reconsider.
lastly, i was speaking up in Seattle at the Web Community Forum conference on Facebook yesterday, and while moderating the Facebook Curmudgeons panel Jeremy Pepper raised a very good point... outside of BeaconGate entirely, Facebook should be doing more about online privacy education.
i really couldn't agree more with that last one; i wrote a tongue-in-cheek post last summer on facebook privacy settings, but more is needed there... especially in light of recent events. companies like Facebook and MySpace and LinkedIn (and new players like Mint & Spock, companies for which i'm an advisor or investor) all probably need to take a very pro-active stance on education around online privacy & help make sure they don't get screwed.
as with eBay & PayPal on identity theft / phishing, whether or not the company in question is creating a problem or is simply a big target for black hats, they have a responsibility to help educate their customers about these issues.
so in summary, while i still feel like Facebook is doing a lot of interesting stuff & innovating at a very fast pace, perhaps there should have been more introspection in how Beacon was rolled out. at the very least, there should definitely have been a universal vendor-wide opt-out at the very beginning, for those who don't want to participate. with the recent opt-in changes yesterday, hopefully they've moved closer to a solution that works better for users -- without limiting the usefulness.
in any case, this Fanboy is going to shut his trap for a few days & just think about it a little more.
hmmm.
Joel-
Any generalization that big is wrong (opt-in for EVERYTHING is the smart business strategy). There are of course times when opt-out is the better strategy. Otherwise it wouldn't exist.
Dave-
Great post. The trait I most admire in people is the ability to rethink positions. With that said, I think you are more right than wrong on this.
One of your points that raised a flag for me was that companies have a responsibility to educate people about privacy. I'm not sure that they have a responsibility as much as an opportunity. They won't suffer to many consequences by not being proactive on privacy, but if they educate users properly they gain trust which leads to a much more active/loyal userbase.
I'm thinking specifically of Mint here, many people don't know how their data flows in and out of mint, so they assume the worst. Having gone (very-slightly) more in depth, I feel they have a reasonable security proposition, something most people that talk about Mint aren't clear on. This is a great example of how education could lead to increased profits.
Posted by: Tyler Willis | Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 11:51 PM
What surprises is me is that people are surprised by this fiasco at all. I am by no means a privacy whiner, ultimately FaceBook will segment its own user base based on it's privacy practices...those who don't like them will leave. But, the real issue here is risk, not revenue. And, the business drivers that caused the Beacon problem are still in place.
Consider this food for thought:
1) The fundamental monetization model as of today barters user privacy for their use of the application (advertisers want their data).
2) Since the $$ comes from advertisers, there will be unrelenting pressure to invade user privacy and/or avoid opt-in whenever possible.
3) $300M hires a lot of people FAST, and it is easy to lose control of policy for this team or that, not to mention 3rd parties.
4) The trust ante has actually been raised for social networks. Just as Web 1.0 privacy and trust issues sprung from Web 1.0 technologies, such as cookies and tracking a user’s Web surfing behavior, Web 2.0 issues will center on the much more delicate and private matters of personal profile information, social relationships and heretofore private interactions among friends, colleagues, acquaintances, customers and strangers.
5) Users might not care, but their parents might, and the press and bloggers certainly do. PR disasters are catalytic events, and the next one will not be starting from ground zero. This is strike one for Facebook.
All this aside...I am actually a Facebook fan. I just hope they are smart enough to get it right. Forget the privacy whiners...opt in for EVERYTHING is the smart business strategy.
Posted by: Joel York | Friday, December 07, 2007 at 08:11 PM
I guess that I'm not so quick to trust the users as some of your critics are. Who would have "wanted" Twitter in the past? Or Flickr? Or even a Blog? All these broadcasting technologies express impulses that people may have had years ago, but they were unable to articulate them until these services were created. The crowd can only sift through change- it can't articulate it. Who knows if Beacon is just like Newsfeed- a misunderstood tool to build a more efficient web?
Posted by: Phil | Thursday, December 06, 2007 at 12:30 PM