Brandon Mechtley

As with any new media paradigm, user generated media and the social web have undergone quite a bit of public scrutiny. Blogging is fighting to distinguish itself as a valid source of news and discussion apart from traditional journalism, Wikipedia is fighting the age-old battle of the validity and trustworthiness of information on the Internet, and podcasts and videocasts are attempting to distinguish themselves as viable sources of entertainment and information apart from television, to name a few issues.

The age of widespread participatory media is continually undergoing definition and situation into society. Many of these outlets for expression and communication are only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of user base, though. Although the number is quite significant, why is it that only one third of teens using the Internet are actively sharing content? What are the teens who are producing content but not sharing it doing with their work? What about adults? These numbers may be enough to make social web companies see financial success, but in terms of bringing about a new age of media production and consumption, there is still a long way to go.

Almost every single milestone in Facebook’s expansion of its userbase has been the result of an outcry amongst its users. Within Facebook, several user groups were organised to protest the decision of expanding its services to high school students. Similarly, but to an even greater extent, Facebook’s decision to allow anyone to create an account, regardless of affiliation, still remains a hot issue. Facebook’s business model had two other large milestones in 2007. In May, Facebook released its API that allows third-party developers to access personal details of users and create applications embedded within the Facebook site. In November, Facebook introduced a new targeted advertising model that includes Beacon, a system that shares purchases made by users at participating third party sites with their friends. Initially, Beacon was an opt-out service, requiring a confusing, explicit opt-out process for every service.

One might ask: who’s in charge of these decisions at Facebook? Why is it that every major change in Facebook is met with such tremendous backlash? In the case of Beacon, Zuckerberg himself had to issue a public apology. One guess might be that this behaviour is one of the natural growing pains of developing new modes of media distribution and communication. Another hypothesis, which I’ve attempted to confirm in my previous posts, is that there are fundamental design flaws of the current state of the social web that are preventing major, rapid innovation.

Privacy is one of many issues that is holding the social web back and preventing it from realising its true potential. At one extreme, there are still people who don’t like having any information about themselves available on the Internet. We need to cater to larger audiences.

It’s all about letting users reduce and alter the large space of what they think the product is doing. When you don’t give users immediate, clear feedback that tells them what you’re doing and when you don’t allow users to choose how they want their information distributed, you’re going to be met with an enormous, resilient possibility space that is going to not only scare users away, but frustrate them to no end.

Privacy is important. Communicating privacy is important. This isn’t an issue that we need to just let someone else figure out for us, and even if it were, we aren’t giving anyone the tools to do so. If we don’t allow people to choose how they want to be seen on the web, we’re never going to be able to have any kind of dialog about privacy.

And that’s the end of my rant.